Education Week - April 13, 2022 - 10

Tips to Manage Screen Time
Education Week asked teachers and remote-learning
experts for advice on ways to balance on-screen
and off-screen time for students.
more screen time. Over a third said student behavior
1.
Remember that not all
screen time is equal
Quality, not just quantity, matters.
Engagement matters, too: Experts
urge teachers to choose lively games
or discussions rather than lecture, for
instance.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Don't let tech
blind you
Educators find themselves
surrounded by teachers trying new
technologies, and think they should,
too, but they forget all the things they
know that don't have to do with the
new technology.
Think learning goal first,
format second
What is the experience you want to
provide? The screen is only one option.
Choice boards can
play a new role
These grid-shaped sets of
instructional activities have been
around a long time; some know
them as learning menus. They
can help generate offline
instructional ideas.
Carve out non-screen time,
even during live sessions
Some teachers divide online classes
into chunks, with time to introduce
a new topic, time away from
the screen to work on it, and then
a regroup for questions and
reflections at the end.
Remember the
old-fashioned stuff
Asking kids to use pencils or
pens with notebooks, work with
manipulatives, or read books
or articles on paper can give them
a break from their screens.
7.
8.
9.
Consider
listening
Audiobooks, podcasts, and
recorded read-alouds can be
valuable tools for breaking up
students' pixel-gazing time.
Don't forget the power
of handwriting
During lectures and videos,
students can keep handwritten
notebooks throughout the year,
rather than taking notes in a Word
document.
Harness the power
of hands-on learning
Learning fractions by cooking a
recipe or exploring nature and writing
about it can get children off their
computer screens while they master
academic standards.
-CATHERINE GEWERTZ
has gotten " much worse " due to rising screen time.
Behavior problems associated with excessive screen
time were relatively well-known even before the pandemic,
including: ramped-up reactions to stress, poorer
focus and executive skills, and higher risk of both acting
out and internalized depression or anxiety. In some
cases, studies have even found students' technologyrelated
focus problems can be severe enough to be misdiagnosed
as attention deficit disorders.
What counts as too much screen time?
But it's less clear just what kind and how much digital
activity qualifies as " excessive. " The American Academy
of Pediatrics recommends children ages 2 to 5 get
no more than an hour of any sort of screen time a day,
but it sets no time limits for school or recreational digital
use for school-age children.
One massive research analysis released at the start
of the pandemic found that the amount of daily screen
time builds across devices; an hour of playing on a tablet
or phone apps followed by a couple of television
shows and another hour of internet browsing, quickly
adds up to four hours of screen time.
The timing of digital use matters too. Minimal screen
time after dark on top of excessive screen time during
the day can significantly damage sleep for children and
adolescents, according to Michelle Garrison, a sleep
specialist and research associate professor in child and
adolescent psychiatry at the University of Washington
in Seattle.
In part, that's because the blue light exuded by many
RESOURCES: See the full responses
from teachers and other experts
along with a list of additional
resources in the article titled, Teacher
Tips: How to Reduce Screen Time
When School Is Online.
> edweek.org
digital devices mimics bright sunlight and delays the release
of melatonin, the chemical that regulates natural
sleep cycles. Garrison said video games and social media
that trigger reward mechanisms in the brain also make
it more difficult for children to quiet their brain activity,
reducing both the quality and quantity of the sleep they
get. This, in turn, can make students more tired and irritable
and less focused on learning the following day.
" Sleep isn't actually always a valued goal for tweens and
teens, " Garrison said in a briefing for the Children and
Screens Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.
It's important for educators to help students connect
their sleep habits to other goals they do care about,
she said: " Whether that's getting into less fights with their
parents or siblings or their girlfriends or boyfriends, or
doing better at school, or even being faster at soccer practice,
there's lots of different things that are downstream
effects of getting more sleep. Often those are things that
we can really leverage to get tweens and teens more motivated
to work with us around media use. "
Context and content are critical when
evaluating use of digital devices
Lumping together different kinds of screen time is a
mistake, experts say. There are no studies that analyze
the interactions between school- and out-of-school
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 13, 2022 | www.edweek.org
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Education Week - April 13, 2022

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