It’s Not About the Literal "Screen Time"

There is a question that has always bothered me a little bit when people talk about technology in schools: “How much screen time are students getting?” I understand the question. Really, as both an educator and as a mother, I do. Screens are everywhere, and as educators, we absolutely should be thinking about what students are doing with technology and how much time they are spending in front of a device. Parents want to know. Teachers want to know. Administrators want to know. And as someone who has spent a pretty significant portion of my career helping schools think about how to integrate technology, I think we should be asking questions about it.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if we were sometimes asking the wrong questions. Because ten minutes of a student watching a video is not the same learning experience as ten minutes of a student creating something, collaborating with a partner, communicating an idea, solving a problem, or getting feedback that helps them understand something they didn't understand ten minutes earlier. The device might look exactly the same in both situations, but what is happening on the other side of that screen is completely different.

And it turns out, I wasn't exactly thinking outside the box with this idea. Other people have been studying this for a much longer time than I have, for years, and the conversation around children and screens has been changing as fast as new technology emerges and as researchers and organizations have learned more about how media is actually being used. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, has moved away from treating screen time as one universal number for older children and instead encourages families to consider the quality and context of digital media use, including what children are doing with it and how it fits into the rest of their lives. Their more recent guidance also recognizes the difference between entertainment media and school-related media when talking about time boundaries. So while I was thinking about this primarily through the lens of educational or instructional technology, the larger conversation was moving in a similar direction: the number on the timer doesn't tell the whole story.

That distinction matters even more when we start comparing screen time at home to screen time at school, because they are not necessarily the same thing. A child spending an hour watching entertaining videos, scrolling YouTube (a social media platform), or playing a game at home is having a very different experience from a student spending an hour using a device at school to build background knowledge, research, write, collaborate, create, receive feedback, revise their thinking, or demonstrate what they understand. That doesn't mean entertainment media doesn't matter or that there shouldn't be boundaries around it; it means I don't think we can put every kind of screen use into one giant bucket and then assume that the number of minutes tells us whether something is good or bad. The purpose, the content, the context, the level of engagement, and what the child is actually doing all matter.

That distinction kept coming back to me. I would hear conversations about screen time and watch people immediately start thinking about minutes, limits, and how to reduce the amount of time students were spending on devices, and I kept thinking, But what are they actually doing while they're there? That question felt much more interesting to me, and honestly, it felt much more useful.

I've never believed that technology automatically makes learning better. Multiple choice is still multiple choice; putting a worksheet on a screen doesn't suddenly make it more engaging because it has a pretty background and a clickable button. But pair that with automatic feedback about what was missed and why, and that brings it up to a different level. A student can spend twenty minutes on a device and do very little thinking, while another student can spend twenty minutes creating, revising, collaborating, communicating, and making something that demonstrates what they understand.

The amount of time might be identical, and even look identical, but the learning experience is not. This is where the misconception lies. So instead of asking only, “How much screen time are students getting?” I wanted people to start wondering, “What are students doing while they're there?” That became the idea behind the professional learning experience I designed called Beyond the Timer.

I wanted to create a professional learning experience that moved the conversation away from simply deciding how many minutes to allow students on devices or whether screen time was ultimately good or bad and toward thinking about the learning experience happening on the other side of the screen. I wasn't interested in giving teachers another list of rules or another reason to feel guilty about using technology; there were already enough polarizing conversations about what teachers were doing. I wanted to give them a different way to look at what was happening in their own classrooms and become curious about it by actually addressing the “elephant in the room”: What are your students doing with the “screens” in your classrooms?

So we started by addressing the benefits as well as the shortfalls of using technology in the classroom. We looked at what behaviors are often associated with engagement and disengagement on paper and how that isn’t necessarily the same when using a digital tool. We also did a deep dive into the kinds of things students were actually doing. Were they watching something, or were they creating something? Were they consuming information, or were they doing something with it? Were they working alone, or were they collaborating? Were they simply completing a digital version of something they could have completed on paper, or was the technology allowing them to do something that would have been difficult, impossible, or simply different without it? Those topics weren't designed to make administrators and teachers feel like they were failing if their students were watching a video or completing a digital worksheet; they were designed to help us think more carefully about the experience we were creating for students.

None of those topics had a simple right-or-wrong answer, and that was intentional. Sometimes watching a video is exactly what students need to build background knowledge or a frame of reference. Sometimes a digital worksheet is the right tool to quickly check and see if the basic fundamentals are clear before moving forward. Sometimes the best technology decision is to close the laptop and pick up a pencil, have a conversation, move around the room, build something with your hands, or simply give your brain a break from a screen. Technology doesn't need to win every time, and I think that is an important part of being an instructional technology coach.

That has probably been one of the hardest things for people to understand about my work over the years. Being an instructional technology coach didn't mean I thought technology should be everywhere, all the time. In fact, sometimes the best technology coaching conversation I could have with a teacher was, “You don't need technology for this.” The goal was never more technology; the goal was always about better learning.

Once others began thinking about it that way, the screen-time conversation became much more interesting. Instead of asking teachers to figure out whether they were using “too much” technology, I wanted them to look at the learning experience and ask whether there was an opportunity to make it more active, meaningful, creative, collaborative, or connected. Sometimes the answer was yes. Sometimes the answer was no. And sometimes the answer was simply, “This is working for me and my class,” and I think we need more room in education for that answer, too.

There seems to always be a tendency to turn almost everything into a polarizing debate in education, often based on individual experiences or opinions instead of research. “Technology is amazing!” “Technology is terrible!” “Students need more digital learning!” “Students need less screen time!” “AI is going to change everything!” “AI is ruining everything!” Meanwhile, there are teachers standing in classrooms trying to figure out what will help the students in front of them learn today. That is where I wanted to put the focus, not on whether technology was winning or losing some imaginary battle, but on whether it was actually helping the students in front of us learn.

Because if a student spends fifteen minutes staring passively at a screen, I don't think the fact that it was only fifteen minutes automatically makes it “acceptable screen time.” On the other hand, if a student spends fifteen minutes using technology to create something, collaborate with classmates, receive feedback, revise their thinking, and demonstrate what they understand, I don't think the fact that they were looking at a screen for thirty minutes automatically makes it “excessive screen time.” The number doesn't tell me enough. I want to know what happened.

That is really what Beyond the Timer was about. It was an invitation to stop looking only at the amount of time and other people’s opinions, and start looking at actual research and the quality of the experience; to become curious about what students were actually doing, what the technology was making possible, and whether there was a small change that could make the learning more meaningful. It wasn't about convincing teachers to use more technology, and it wasn't about convincing them to use less. It was about helping them notice what was happening and make an intentional decision about what came next.

And, just like so much of my coaching work, I didn't want that small change to feel overwhelming. Maybe it was changing one activity. Maybe it was asking students to create instead of consume. Maybe it was giving students a chance to collaborate instead of completing the task independently. Maybe it was adding a reflection or a discussion. Maybe it was recognizing that the technology wasn't actually helping and deciding not to use it. Sometimes the best next step was simply asking a better question.

“How much screen time are they getting?” isn't necessarily a bad question in and of itself. I just don't think it is the only question that we need to be asking, because I want to know what is happening on the other side of the screen. What are students thinking about? What are they creating, communicating, solving, understanding, and learning? Because that is where the learning is occurring, and it is the part that always matters most. The learning.