Prioritizing Screen Time Restrictions Would Hurt the Students Who Need EdTech Most

The following statement on the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory and Toolkit on the Harms of Screen Use can be attributed to Sara Kloek, Vice President, Education and Youth Policy, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) shares the commitment to children's well-being reflected in the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory and Toolkit, but is concerned with the Advisory's and Toolkit's lack of distinction between proven purpose built educational technology and consumer technology.

The Advisory's own evidence shows that the effects of screen use depend on content and context - which is why distinguishing commercially built consumer technology from purpose-built educational technology is not a technicality; it is the entire policy question. Educational technology is curriculum-aligned, educator-governed, proven to improve student outcomes, and protected under FERPA, COPPA, ESSA, IDEA, and CIPA. Consumer platforms are not.

We are therefore concerned that the Advisory's recommendations for schools - broad limits on classroom screen use, screen-time caps, and a preference for paper "whenever possible" - draw no such line. Applied bluntly, they would strip away the tools students need most: assistive technology for students with disabilities, the only high-quality instruction in many rural and low-income schools, and the adaptive tools teachers use to catch struggling readers early. The Advisory itself recognizes that some students need these devices - and precision in the law protects them better than narrow carve-outs.

The research supports protecting these tools, not restricting them: RAND found that blended learning can double typical annual learning gains, and the world's highest-performing systems - Singapore, South Korea, and Estonia - do not ban classroom devices. SIIA will continue to advocate for targeted legislation that distinguishes educational technology from consumer technology. The right question is not how much time students spend on screens, but what they are doing, who governs those tools, and what the evidence shows.