Los Angeles parents are fed up with schools loading up students with laptops and tablets, and assigning schoolwork on a slew of apps.
Some families, who had decided against giving their children screens at home, told school board members that they were appalled to find young students using school-issued devices – even in kindergarten. Some parents complained that their children were able to play video games or watch social media videos during school. Others reported that an artificial intelligence app, which fourth graders were assigned to use to create portraits of the fictional Swedish schoolgirl Pippi Longstocking, generated sexualised imagery.
Such concerns prompted parents last year to form a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push for increased technology oversight in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest public school system.
Last week, the Los Angeles school board passed a resolution requiring the district to restrict student access to YouTube, eliminate digital devices entirely through first grade and develop screen time limits for higher grades – becoming the first major US school system to do so.
In Los Angeles, parents urged school board members to back the new tech restrictions.
“For over a year, our members have been advocating for a safe and science-backed approach to classroom technology,” said Anya Meksin, the deputy director of Schools Beyond Screens. “Enough to Big Tech encroaching into our public schools.”
For years, tech giants including Google and Apple, along with companies that make school software, have marketed their technologies to schools. The tech industry promised that the devices and apps would customise learning, improve students’ academic results and widen job opportunities. Many districts rushed to adopt the tools, fueling a booming, multibillion-dollar school tech market.
But some researchers have found that digital devices failed to boost students’ test scores and graduation rates, and that they can significantly detract from learning.
Current and former school district officials say the fast-growing parents’ crusade reflects a long-standing reality: Many public schools lack the resources to adequately vet classroom tech.
“The burden on school districts to manage these systems is enormous,” said Hal Friedlander, a former chief information officer of New York City Public Schools who has also helped other school districts evaluate technology. “Unfortunately, most districts are small and they don’t have the resources or the expertise.”
Some children’s educational organisations have similar concerns. This year, two United Nations agencies, UNICEF and UNESCO, issued online learning guidelines warning that public schools had largely ceded digital education to private tech companies.
Online learning tools had introduced important innovations, the UN agencies said. But they also warned that digital learning platforms could treat schoolchildren “like consumers”; expose students to health, safety and privacy risks; and threaten school “autonomy.” Instead, “public needs and public purposes must steer” digital learning, UNESCO and UNICEF recommended.
Some tech companies and school tech organisations note that using school laptops and apps can teach students important digital skills. And they argue that parent groups are conflating children’s social media use – such as students scrolling through streaming videos during class – with useful learning tools specifically designed for education. Some math and reading apps, for instance, can customise lessons to each child, allowing teachers to chart the student’s progress.
“Educational technology allows teachers to differentiate instruction and assess student understanding in real time,” said Keith Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, a nonprofit organisation for school technology leaders. (The school networking group’s corporate sponsors include Amazon, Google, Lenovo and Microsoft.)
In recent interviews and Zoom meetings, parents in more than a dozen states raised concerns about the safety, privacy and effectiveness of student devices, classroom software and learning apps. Some parents pointed to well-known school software companies that have recently faced complaints about poor data security and the collection of sensitive student data. Other parents said their districts struggled to limit student access to video games and video-streaming platforms on school-issued devices.
Over the past year, Los Angeles has become a centre of parent-led efforts to rein in school tech.
In a recent Zoom presentation for Los Angeles parents, Alisha Mernick described how she had started a campaign at her son’s elementary school to help families opt their children out of i-Ready, a math and reading app with gamelike features.
Mernick, 40, and other parents said they were concerned that the app used video-gamelike techniques, including cute animation and reward points, to hook youngsters.
“If I’m giving my 5-year-old a game-ified version of a worksheet, it will hijack the development of her intrinsic motivation and jeopardise her ability to learn,” said Mernick, who teaches art education at California State University, Northridge.
In a statement, Curriculum Associates, the company behind i-Ready, said its online learning assessments and lessons “help teachers act on student needs faster and more precisely.” The company added that i-Ready’s student-engagement techniques “mirror classroom reward systems.”
Parents say their concerns escalated after recent scandals related to student tech.
In 2023, the Los Angeles Unified School District approved a US$6.2mil (RM24.6mil) deal with a little-known AI startup to develop a chatbot for student use. The next year, federal prosecutors charged the founder of the startup with defrauding investors.
The AI chatbot fiasco prompted Schools Beyond Screens this year to start a petition, called Get Big Tech Off Kids’ Desks. It urged the Los Angeles school system to audit recent tech contracts to make sure the digital tools for students were “safe, legal and effective.” More than 1,000 people have signed on.
Among the concerned parents is Sandra Martinez Roe, 50, a children’s book author whose son attends a Los Angeles elementary school. She said she had chosen not to buy him an iPad or a laptop for home use. At the start of second grade, however, her son came home with a school-issued Chromebook for his schoolwork.
She worried about the kinds of websites the school device might enable him to view. She was also concerned that some online learning software seemed to lack rigorous proof of educational effectiveness.
“They’re just selling it and pushing it through the school system,” said Roe, who is a member of the Schools Beyond Screens leadership team. “Our children are the guinea pigs.”
In a statement, the Los Angeles Unified School District said it had thorough processes for evaluating technology tools to ensure that “any platform used with students meets rigorous standards for privacy, cybersecurity and educational effectiveness.”
After the Pippi Longstocking incident, the district said, it reviewed how the AI tool was used in classrooms and worked with the software company on “strengthening content controls.” As for i-Ready, the district said the math and reading app helped inform teachers’ instructional decisions and improve student learning.
“We will continue to apply and strengthen our review processes to ensure that all approved tools meet the high standards our students and families deserve,” the district statement said.
Now, Los Angeles school board members such as Nick Melvoin are pushing for increased tech oversight in schools. In 2024, he championed a board resolution that barred student cellphone use during school. This year, after working with Schools Beyond Screens, Melvoin introduced the recent resolution curbing school technology.
In addition to new screen time limits for each grade, the policy will require elementary and middle schools to prohibit student device use during lunch and recess. The district must also compile a report on all current school technology contracts. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
