Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, June 19, 2025

“The Texas Legislature just banned K-12 students from using cellphones in school. Dozens of other states have taken steps to do the same. This is a good and needed step forward. It will help students to concentrate and learn, without pings and alerts and distractions.

For this simple step, much credit is due to the sociologist Jonathan Haidt, who started a school phone banning revolution with his book The Anxious Generation. But locking up personal phones is only the beginning.

Less discussed are the school-sponsored devices, starting in elementary school, which are increasingly replacing pen-and-paper learning, teacher-student interactions and, in some cases, recess.

Growing up in the 1980s, summer was my indulgent screen time for daytime movies and TV shows. These days, it’s the school year. Students in grades 1 through 12 now spend an average of 98 minutes on school-issued devices during the school day — more than 20% of instructional time — according to data reported by The Wall Street Journal.”