Several states—and the LA public schools—are setting limits on screen time

When Lila Byock's oldest son was 11, she began to worry about how much time he spent on his school-issued iPad. It seemed as if he wasn't allowed to go anywhere without it. "To the point that he was one day penalized for not having his iPad with him during PE class," she recalls. She asked his school in central Los Angeles to explain why there was so much digital learning, even years after the COVID-19 pandemic: "There was no justification for why it was better," she said. "It was just sort of, 'Well, we got these things during COVID and might as well keep using them.'" Byock started talking to fellow parents and formed Schools Beyond Screens, an advocacy group with thousands of parents, beginning in Los Angeles but eventually expanding around the United States. She says whenever she talks to parents, they all have the same question: "This is an emergency—what can we do about it?" Recently, after months of petitions and demonstrations, the school board of the Los Angeles Unified School District voted unanimously to limit screen time for all grade levels, beginning in the fall, with a particular focus on eliminating it entirely for elementary-age students.