I'm Lydia Who, and this is the Fox Business Rundown.

Friday, April 10th, 2026.

The battle over screens in schools is entering a new phase.

Right now, it isn't effective.

It isn't safe.

It isn't legal and it isn't better than an educator.

First, it was cell phones. Schools move to ban them, limit them, get them out of the classroom.

But now, parents are turning their attention to something else. The screens, schools themselves are handing to kids.

Laptops, tablets, educational software, across the country, parents are pushing back on what they see as an over-reliance on this technology, and calling for a return to more traditional learning, pen, paper, and face-to-face teaching.

This isn't just a debate. It's organized. Parents are banded together by the hundreds,

sharing playbooks, pressuring districts, and demanding change. Their argument, it's not just

about distraction anymore. It's about whether this kind of learning is actually working. On the other

side, educators and technology leaders say digital tools are essential, preparing students for a workforce that expects them to be tech fluent.

But some research suggests students using computers in the classroom can perform worse than those learning in the old-fashioned way.

So now the question is shifting, not whether screens belong in schools,

but how much and at what cost? I would say that it's actually been a parallel track for a while.

Emily Cherkin, known as the screen time consultant is a former middle school teacher and creator

of the unplug ed tech toolkit. I always say there's sort of two digital

elephants in the room. And we've talked for a long time about the smartphones and social media,

which are primarily products given to children by their parents. But what's happening is at the same

time, children are being given internet connected devices by schools in the name of education.

And this has been a slow creep. I mean, this is not a new phenomenon. In many ways, some of the groups I've been

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