How much screen time is too much?
Some metro Atlanta school district leaders are trying to figure out how to answer that question, as parents raise concerns about the amount of time students spend on laptops, tablets or other electronic devices during the school day.
Officials with Atlanta Public Schools and Marietta City Schools each passed measures this week aimed at limiting time students spend on screens in class. Both districts had prohibited the use of personal electronic devices, such as smartphones, in class before state legislators passed a law banning them in all public schools.
The Marietta school board approved a resolution Tuesday aimed at limiting classroom screen time and the use of artificial intelligence. The measure says technology should be used in class “only when it purposefully enhances, scaffolds, or improves instruction and student learning.” The legislation says the district will identify strategies to reduce screen time during the upcoming school year.
“Screens should be closed by default, open with purpose,” Superintendent Grant Rivera said. “We don’t want kids to be sitting in front of screens. That’s not where we believe the most effective learning occurs.”
In Atlanta, the school board’s policy review committee approved the district’s first-ever classroom screen time policy on Thursday, after receiving community feedback. Committee chair Alfred “Shivy” Brooks told community members at a recent town hall the district will pilot the policy during the 2026-27 school year.
“We are attempting to do our best here,” Brooks said. “We will review the impacts of benefits, cost, the unintended consequences of this policy, the unintended benefits of this policy toward the end of the school year, so that we can continue to make this a policy that works for our kids.”
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
The policy says classroom technology use should be “high value” and restricts the amount of time students in each grade should spend on screens. The rules limit students in pre-kindergarten through second grade to no more than 60 minutes of screen time. Students in grades three through five are restricted to 90 minutes. The guidelines say students in elementary grades should spend no more than 30 consecutive minutes on devices. Middle and high school requirements are more flexible, with no more than half of instructional activities spent on devices.
Some APS parents urged district officials to go further. They pointed to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education, which recently passed a resolution restricting classroom screen time, including banning the use of electronic devices for students in preschool through second grade.
Kitan Ajanaku is the parent of a soon-to-be second grader at Beecher Hills Elementary. Her son attended a Montessori preschool, where children learn through hands-on materials. So, the transition to the use of electronic devices in public school was jarring, she said.
“They’re kindergarten, 5, 6 years old, and they’re getting handed their personal laptop,” she said. “He doesn’t have a tablet at home, so … it was just really unsettling for me.”
However, members of the policy review committee were reluctant to eliminate all screen time in the early grades. They said young students need to build some technological proficiency because they’re expected to take the state-issued Georgia Milestones assessment digitally starting in third grade. They considered reducing the daily limit in grades P-2 to 30 minutes, but ultimately didn’t.
“I think if we go to 30 minutes a day … we’re two weeks from 2½ weeks from school start(ing), and it’s tough,” Atlanta Superintendent Bryan Johnson said.
Johnson added the policy can be revised during the pilot year, meaning the guidelines could change for the second semester of the school year.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screens for children younger than 18 months old and suggests limiting children ages 2-5 to an hour of “high-quality content.” The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office recently issued an advisory urging families and schools to reduce children’s screen time because “certain kinds of screens and patterns of screen use can pose real harm to children.”
Some parents also urged the district to ban access to websites like YouTube and other video streaming sites, but Brooks expressed concern that teachers may also be blocked from accessing some sites they use to plan lessons.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
During a June town hall on the issue, APS asked Bolton Academy third grade teacher Breonna Jenkins to talk about how she uses technology in class. Jenkins explained she uses digital platforms where students can read books and answer questions, a skill she said they need to be ready for the Georgia Milestones assessment. She said teachers should have clear objectives for using screens during lessons.
“Every minute students spend on the device should be meaningful,” she said. “It should be structured, and it should have instructional quality. So it’s simply not about screen time, but about screen value.”
Johnson urged parents to be engaged but also patient as the district rolls out the pilot program.
“There will be some bumps,” he said.
He continued, “There’s a review cadence that happens, and if we see something that needs to pivot, we’ll raise it to the board or the board will raise it to us. We want to be simple enough that we can make the necessary adjustments.”
The full Atlanta school board will consider the policy at its next meeting on Aug. 10.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
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