For high school senior Aliyah Pack, getting distracted during school is the norm. Kids in her Pennsylvania school district use iPads starting in kindergarten, switch to Chromebooks in second grade and get their own MacBooks in eighth grade.
Aliyah has ADHD, and finds it difficult to concentrate when she’s learning from a screen. She’ll watch Netflix in class on her school laptop, hiding her earbuds behind her long, curly hair.
“It’s very hard to get into the mindset of being in school,” Aliyah said.
Aliyah’s mother saw her grades were falling and asked the school to take away her laptop. But she was told that wasn’t possible.
Across the country, parents are voicing concerns about excessive screen time in schools and lobbying educators to go back to pencil and paper. In places like Lower Merion Township, where Aliyah goes to high school, some are taking it even further. Over 600 people in the affluent Philadelphia suburb have signed a petition asking to preserve parents’ ability to opt their children out of using digital devices during the school day. The public school district has pushed back, saying it’s not feasible to let hundreds of students opt out of technology that is essential to the curriculum.
