New Surgeon General Advisory and FCC Announcement Seek to Address Growing Concern About Screens in Schools
Amid growing concern about the amount of time children spend on screens (both in and out of school) and rising skepticism about their educational value, the U.S. Surgeon General and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have each taken significant steps in recent weeks that signal a broader federal reckoning with the educational and developmental costs of excessive screen use.
In the Surgeon General’s Warning on the Harms of Screen Use, the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General states that excessive screen time is linked to poor educational and health outcomes among school-aged children. The advisory highlights evidence connecting high levels of screen exposure with weaker academic performance and emphasizes that screen use can disrupt healthy sleep, which is fundamental to learning, mood, behavior, physical health, and overall development.
The advisory also underscores that early exposure to screens carries developmental and cognitive risks, including links to poorer language outcomes in early life. It recommends delaying screen exposure as long as possible for younger children and setting age-appropriate limits on time and content so that screens do not displace reading, play, direct instruction, and face-to-face interaction. While digital tools can support learning when used intentionally, the advisory warns against allowing screens to become the default mode of instruction or recreation.
Importantly, the advisory highlights the COVID-era surge in device use, when many schools dramatically expanded screen-based learning, and suggests that many have yet to fully recalibrate their approach since that period of rapid digital adoption.
Days after the Surgeon General’s warning drew national attention, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launched a formal review of the E‑Rate program, the federal initiative that subsidizes internet connectivity and network infrastructure for schools and libraries. In a June 3 FCC blog post, Carr said the review is intended to ensure that federally supported networks advance student success, strengthen online safety, and give families greater confidence that school connectivity serves educational goals.
The FCC says the review will consider whether E‑Rate services still reflect Congress’s original vision for the program, whether existing safeguards are adequate, and whether the rules should do more to support student achievement, parental visibility, and child online safety. It will also examine whether stronger oversight is needed to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse while preserving connectivity that is genuinely necessary for teaching and learning.
A central issue in the FCC’s review is the gap between parental oversight at home and limited visibility into children’s digital environments at school. Families can often monitor or restrict personal devices, but those controls rarely extend to school-issued devices or E‑Rate‑funded networks.
The FCC is seeking comment on several questions, including:
- Whether current safeguards under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) adequately protect students from inappropriate or harmful content
- How screen time itself should factor into federal education and connectivity policy
- Whether E‑Rate funds are being directed where they are most educationally effective
- How to strengthen oversight and reduce waste, fraud, and abuse within the program
The review also includes a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to streamline E-Rate administration and strengthen accountability.
Across the country, states and school districts are reevaluating device‑heavy instructional models. Some districts have reduced screen use, particularly for younger students, while others have removed devices altogether from early grades. That shift is rooted in a growing recognition that screens in schools have not been the educational panacea parents were promised. Instead, a growing body of evidence seems to show the opposite: stagnating, and in some cases declining, children’s literacy, numeracy, attention, and higher-order reasoning that coincide with widespread adoption of devices in classrooms.
In written testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath argued that “increased classroom screen exposure is generally associated with weaker learning outcomes, not stronger ones,” and reported that more than half of children now use a computer at school for one to four hours a day, while a full quarter spend more than four hours on screens during a typical seven-hour school day.
At the federal level, lawmakers have introduced multiple bills to curb excessive screen time among children, including in federally funded settings. Horvath’s testimony adds urgency to those efforts: he cited research suggesting that less than half of students’ time on classroom devices is spent actually learning with students off-task for as much as 38 minutes of every hour when using those devices. In his view, this is not simply a matter of weak implementation but of a deeper mismatch between how children learn and how digital platforms are designed (namely, to capture attention, fragment focus, and accelerate task switching). With graduation season prompting families to look ahead to the next school year, that testimony has helped sharpen the policy case for restoring clear limits, stronger evidence standards, and greater parental visibility into how screens are used in school.
Together, the Surgeon General’s advisory and the FCC’s E‑Rate review reflect a growing recognition that more technology has not translated to better educational outcomes. Connectivity and digital tools can support learning when used intentionally and appropriately, but without clear boundaries and accountability, they may also contribute to distraction, disengagement, and declining academic outcomes.
As federal agencies revisit long-standing assumptions about screens in schools, they should prioritize a more balanced approach to education. One that reduces reliance on screen-based learning and restores proven practices that strengthen attention, literacy, and genuine learning.
