40% of middle and high school students spend about half the school day on devices

In March 2020, when the pandemic had kicked off in earnest and schools shut around the world, educational institutions rushed to source e-learning devices to ensure kids could keep learning from home. Now, as we hurtle time-warpingly close to six years on from that point, students are back in class as normal, except they now arrive equipped with the devices that helped them through the remote learning era.

Plugged in

Per an October survey from The New York Times published by The Upshot last week, 8 in 10 American teachers say that students at their schools now have devices assigned to them, up from around a third who said the same in 2019. While that might not be the most surprising news to anyone who has kids or knows even a little bit about modern classroom dynamics, the amount of time some students are spending on those screens each day may come as a little more of a shock.

As you might expect, tablets, laptops, and other school-issued tech are relied on less heavily in elementary schools, with a healthy majority of students spending less than one hour a day on devices in the classroom, according to their teachers. Older kids, however, spend more time with devices in school. Per the most recent Pew Research Center figures, the average school day is around six hours in the US, meaning that the 40% of middle and high school students who spend more than three hours on devices see at least half of their time in school consumed by tech.

Teachers are already worried about screens in schools — a different part of the survey revealed that 70% of respondents said devices are distracting students at least “a little” from schoolwork. Still, despite how you may personally feel, all of this becomes pretty tricky when you remember that many of the so-called “good jobs” that parents and teachers may hope children get are, when stripped back, basically just eight hours spent staring at a screen all day.