I think the pendulum is swinging again. And not just a little!
And honestly, I think it probably needs to.
For years, those of us working in and with educational technology have spent a lot of time making the case for technology in schools. We have talked about digital skills, creativity, collaboration, coding, digital literacy, and preparing children for a world that is increasingly shaped by technology. Schools have hired EdTech integrators, schools have gone 1-to-1, entire countries have followed a one-child-one-device policy. Schools celebrated the paper-less classroom and educators have been told to ‘Not be a worksheet school’. Even my own YouTube channel was named Flipped Classroom Tutorials after the Flipped Teaching trend where students get content digitally at home and come prepared to class ready to deepen understanding!
I still believe in all of that. I really do!
BUT
I also think we need to be honest enough to ask ourselves whether, in some places, we have simply ended up with too much screen. Have we gone too far? Are screens everywhere and are they actively damaging what we are trying to do?
The conversation around children’s screen use has certainly shifted. The UK’s updated Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2026 places a continued emphasis on children’s safety online and the safeguarding responsibilities schools have around online harms. The Department for Education has also made its mobile phone guidance statutory from September 2026.
Then there are the headlines.
A huge new review published in JAMA Pediatrics looked across research involving more than 2.8 million children and young people in 64 countries. It found associations between greater screen exposure and poorer overall academic achievement, language development, and a range of emotional, behavioural, and peer outcomes. (All things teachers have been raising anecdotally for years now)
Some truly alarming comparisons are being made. The review noted that the drops in these developmental outcomes are (and I quote) as significant, or even greater, than the impacts of well-established factors like family wealth, parenting behaviour, and whether a child was born prematurely.
This is where I think we need to slow down. And not the way AI companies say they slow down and then release flagship models. But really slow down and reflect!
The study does not prove that screens cause these problems. Experts quoted alongside the research have pointed out that the associations were generally small, and that the research could not properly distinguish between different types of screen use. A video call with Grandma, playing a creative game, scrolling TikTok, and watching three hours of television are all technically “screen time”, but they are not remotely the same experience.
That’s why I worry that we are about to experience another pendulum swing.
For a while, the message was essentially: Technology is the future. Get children using it.
Now we risk replacing that with: Screens are bad. Get children away from them.
Neither is particularly helpful.
The better question has always been: What is the screen doing?
Is it replacing a conversation? Is it replacing play? Is it replacing books?(and yes I include YouTube videos of picture books as a replacement) Is it replacing movement? Is it simply keeping children occupied? Remember that SAMR model everyone used to talk about! It still stands today… Simple substitution (S) is never the goal!
Or is ‘the screen’ helping a child create, communicate, investigate, solve a problem, understand something that would otherwise be difficult to see, or make something that did not exist before?
Those are very different uses of technology. And this is something I have been thinking about a lot recently. It has influenced the way I am approaching technology both in school and in the things I create outside school and how I ‘design’ or for lack of better word ‘limit’ devices at home.
At school, we are making some changes.
Our wet-play guidance has changed to reduce passive screen use and viewing. For our youngest children, we are being much more deliberate about screens being part of the environment. In Pre-Nursery, screens should not simply be running in the background as part of continuous provision.
In Key Stage 1, one of my personal pet hates has always been calling the interactive whiteboard “the TV”.
It isn’t a TV. It is a tool.
And if we are going to have one dominating the front of the classroom, I want us to have a good reason for turning it on. We are maximising carpet time, books, conversation, and hands-on experiences. If we can demonstrate a concept with physical equipment rather than a website with simulation, or dare I say ‘White Rose Maths presentation’ (I see you Tiny! If you know… you know)
We are also thinking about when technology should not be the first step.
Take computing. Before some of our children even see a screen, they are learning about algorithms with Bee-Bots and Tale-Bots. They can give instructions. They can predict. They can debug. They can change an instruction and see what happens. They can think computationally.
The device can come later.
That feels like a much healthier relationship with technology than simply putting a device in front of a child because the lesson is called “Computing”.
The same thinking has found its way into my own Tech Team after-school activity. We’ve been looking at wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; not simply by using them, but by asking how they work, where their strengths and pitfalls are, and what actually happens when information moves between devices. We’ve been learning about how the internet travels around the world. We’ve been learning about pixels. (Some of our resources)
Not just using a screen. Understanding the screen.
That difference is important to me. We shouldn’t only teach children how to use technology. We should teach them to understand it.
This philosophy doesn’t just apply in my classroom. It shapes how I parent at home, too.
Recently, I was watching my teenage son try to complete a piece of homework on his iPad.
It was painful to watch.
He was constantly swiping to switch between apps, trying to reference a webpage while typing his notes, all while the on-screen keyboard was eating up more than half of his screen space.
I guided him to put the tablet away and use a Chromebook or a laptop instead. We talked about the value of a physical keyboard and the efficiency of having multiple windows open side-by-side. The iPad didn’t have to disappear, but it became a second screen. A tool to increase productivity rather than extinguish it.
Sadly, he is a teenager. And like most teenagers, he possesses the innate ability to believe he always knows best.
Even when confronted with the reality that he could complete his work in a fraction of the time, he still held dear to his iPad. He actively refused the change.
And this is exactly where we, as educators and schools, need to step in.
Are we providing the right devices?
Are we teaching the right skills?
Or are we simply going with whatever happens to be in front of us? Or worse, whats cheapest and known. Maybe it’s time to have some difficult conversations in the various school board rooms as well!
Would you let a five-year-old write their final creative written piece on a torn cardboard box? Or would you guide them to use lined paper instead?
We guide them. We show them the better tool.
In my opinion, we need to be having these explicit discussions with our students about their device choices.
Just because a device can do a job, doesn’t mean it should. A tablet might be fantastic for drawing, reading, or quick research, but it is not always the right one for heavy lifting.
We need to teach our children how to choose the right tool for the right task.
And this thinking has also changed what I have been creating.
This is one of the reasons I started Unplugged and Unlocked, my podcast about technology for children. Why a podcast? Because a podcast is screen-free. It is slower. It still has stories, characters, jokes, adventures, and plenty of action, but it doesn’t require a child to stare at something. Episodes are deliberately kept to around 15 minutes. It is technology education without another glowing rectangle being placed in front of a child. (Shameless plug: Its on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music and Spotify in case you’d like to check it out)
And that doesn’t mean I have suddenly decided that screens are bad. Quite the opposite. It is about offering another option.
The same thinking sits behind two of the iPad apps I have recently created: Amber Animator(link) and Unplugged Podcast Maker(link). Yes, iPad apps, as again, it’s not the device that evil.
I wanted to make safe screen time tools that children could actually do something with, rather than products designed to keep them tapping, scrolling, and coming back for another hit of stimulation. They are creative tools. There is no endless feed. No slot-machine interface. No quick dopamine hit designed to keep a child engaged for as long as possible.
You make something. You create. You tell a story.
And then you can put the device down.
That last part is important. Perhaps one of the questions we should be asking about children’s technology is not simply: “How long were they on the screen?” but: “What happened while they were there?”
Did they make something? Did they learn something? Did they talk about it? Did they create something they can share? Did it lead them back into the physical world? Did it encourage curiosity?
Or did it simply fill twenty minutes?
There is a huge difference.
I think some balance is overdue. I say this as someone who has spent a large part of my career encouraging schools to use technology well.
I still want children to code. I still want them to create digital stories. I still want them to understand AI. I still want them to understand networks, pixels, algorithms, and how the devices around them actually work. I still want technology to be used brilliantly in classrooms.
But I also want children climbing trees. Building things. Drawing. Talking. Reading. Playing. Getting bored. Making a mess. Solving problems with their hands. Listening to stories and music with their eyes closed.
And sometimes simply being away from a screen.
So yes, I think the pendulum is swinging. And perhaps that is a good thing.
But I hope we don’t swing all the way to the other side. Because the answer isn’t 100% screen-free. It isn’t 100% screen-filled either.
The answer is much more difficult than that.
It is being intentional. It is knowing when technology adds something and when it doesn’t. It is teaching children to be creators rather than simply consumers. It is understanding that an iPad is not automatically educational just because it is in a classroom. And it is remembering that “screen time” is not one single thing.
Perhaps the real goal shouldn’t be to reduce screens at all costs. Perhaps it should be to make the time children do spend with technology worthwhile.
And increasingly, I think that means being brave enough to turn the screen off when it isn’t.
The pendulum can swing. We just need to make sure it doesn’t take good technology education with it.
Note: This article was first posted on SethiDeClercq.com and ReadySetCompute.com
