Imagine a kindergartener comes home singing a new song she learned at school, but then ends the tune with, “Hit like and subscribe below!” Or a high schooler sits at the kitchen table typing an essay while TikTok streams on her phone, her attention shifting between the paper and liking, sharing, and reposting videos. It’s no wonder parents are demanding that schools do something about screen time. Yet, school leaders are stuck between two competing demands: a call from parents for stricter screen time limits and a job market that requires almost the opposite. As of 2023, 92 percent of jobs required at least some digital literacy (National Skills Coalition, 2023), and the bar is rapidly rising as more jobs require artificial intelligence (AI) literacy. According to the LinkedIn 2026 Labor Market Report, in the past two years employers have created 1.3 million AI-related jobs. Furthermore, in the United States, jobs requiring AI literacy grew 70 percent year over year, making it the fastest-growing job skill in the country. The statistics don’t lie—companies are prioritizing AI literacy (Shapero, 2026).
Why Bans Aren’t the Right Response
Screen time limits and bans attempt to answer the question, How much screen time is too much? But that question is incomplete. Connecticut’s Westport Public Schools Superintendent Tom Scarice found a more useful question: Which screen time is necessary, valuable, and developmentally appropriate, and which should be redesigned or removed? Scarice’s question acknowledges that not all screen time is created equal, and that there are purposeful uses for technology, as well as ways that screen time can and should be reduced in schools.
When Scarice and his leadership team wrote their district’s 2025 strategic plan, there was a deliberate and integrated focus on AI. Five of the district’s eight strategic priorities explicitly addressed AI. At the same time, the plan intentionally elevated the liberal arts and strengthened theater programs, recognizing that as AI becomes more capable, the uniquely human capacities these disciplines cultivate become increasingly essential to education, citizenship, and human flourishing. Westport leaders anticipated community concerns with a strategic plan so explicitly focused on growing AI skills for their students. In light of this, they proactively wanted to involve teachers, students, and parents in understanding when, how, and why students would be using technology. The executive leadership wanted to be clear about screen time use from the start.
Westport, a K–12 district of approximately 5,500 students, has a long history of enthusiastic support of instructional technology learning and well-resourced schools and library-media centers. Given the nationwide debate about screen time in schools, Scarice and his team wanted to be sure that the board of education and wider community had accurate data about what is happening in their schools and to emphasize that the use of technology is intentional and aligned to learning objectives.
Scarice’s thoughtful response to screen time prompted a collaboration between his district and EdAdvance, a Regional Education Service Center in Connecticut. EdAdvance helped Westport implement the AI strategy in their strategic plan, and the collaboration has led to EdAdvance’s Screen Shift initiative, an effort to help other districts confront similar questions around technology bans, uses, and innovation.
A Three-Pronged Approach
While the Westport team of over 50 faculty members were collaborating on their strategic plan, one essential question rose to the top: How can we maximize the power of AI and minimize screen time? At first glance, this question seems like a contradiction, but Scarice deliberately posed this false binary to urge district stakeholders to focus on screen time discernment, not screen time reduction. To answer this question, Westport needed to conduct a comprehensive baseline study to create a picture of what was happening in the district. Without this study, any changes in screen time, technology, or AI would be merely guesswork. Westport took a three-pronged approach to the audit, treating screen time as a story that no single data source could tell.
1. Perception
The first prong was perception. Westport engaged Hanover Research, an independent research firm, to help conduct screen time surveys with students, staff, and families across preK–12 (the students polled were in grades 3 and higher). The firm gathered 4,404 responses across these three groups to capture both perceptions of technology use and how technology is actually used in classrooms. The questions included opinions on how much time is an appropriate amount of time for students in different age groups to use technology, beliefs about the positive or negative impact on learning with technology, and thoughts about the importance of digital literacy skills for college and careers. But perception and self-reporting are only one piece of the puzzle.
2. Curriculum Data
The second prong was an in-depth review of curriculum data. Westport uses the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework, and all curricular units are documented in an identical format. There were hundreds of documents across all grades and subjects available for analysis. Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Anna Mahon and Curriculum Instructional Lead for 6–12 English/Language Arts Jessica DiBuono used NotebookLM to start their analysis. They co-created a table that indicated the grade level, unit, and digital task, and assigned each task a level using the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) framework. They were looking explicitly at how students were using technology for learning and assessment activities. Finally, they left a column blank for the teachers to fill in time estimates. This was where teachers entered their best estimate for the number of minutes or hours they anticipated students using screens to complete the task. This kept a human in the loop and ensured that teachers looked at every task that surfaced the use of technology. Mahon and DiBuono emphasized that the work NotebookLM did was just the beginning. The real work was what came next: in-depth conversations with teachers about what NotebookLM surfaced.
Districts that don’t establish a baseline of how technology is being used now will be making decisions in the dark later.
3. Behavioral/Network Data
The third prong was network and usage data, led by Director of Technology Natalie Carrignan. The district examined two weeks of network traffic and GoGuardian analytics for a randomly selected sample of 80 students per grade (a sample size yielding statistical significance at the 90–95 percent confidence level). The team only considered school hours, not at-home usage, within a two-week window with 10 consecutive school days. They used retroactive data so that teachers couldn’t change their behavior knowing an audit was coming. They also did not make any judgments on “off task” or “on task” behavior; if the computer was open, that counted as instructional time with a device. While this was perhaps the messiest data and most difficult to parse, particularly at the high school level, it was one more piece included in the overall analysis.
What the Audit Revealed
Each of the three prongs had their limits. The survey captured how students, families, and staff felt about screen time, but not what was actually happening minute by minute. The curriculum review showed what teachers intended about how screen time is deliberately built into lessons, but not what students experienced. Network and GoGuardian data showed what students were actually doing on devices, but said nothing about what teachers intended or how students perceived screen time. It was only when taken together that these three lenses let Westport see screen time experientially, structurally, and behaviorally.
The first surprise when looking at the data was a paradox. When parents and staff were asked about students’ overall time on screens in school, 52 percent of parents and 53 percent of staff said it was too much. But when those same respondents were asked about specific uses (classwork, homework, communicating with teachers, learning at school), large majorities called the time “about right.” Students, asked the same specific-use questions, were even more comfortable: Only 10 percent said they spent too much time on screens. This is evidence that “screen time” is too blunt a category to drive policy, and acting on feelings alone could lead to cuts and changes to the wrong things. In addition, concern about screen time use jumps sharply as students enter adolescence. In elementary school, only 36 percent of all respondents (students, faculty, and parents) think there is “too much” screen time. This rises to 70 percent in middle school and 73 percent in high school.
The screen time survey also revealed an issue of distrust between parents and the school when it comes to the role technology plays. Parents are more skeptical than students or staff that technology facilitates or enhances feedback from teachers (53 percent vs. 69 percent and 75 percent, respectively), collaboration with peers (41 percent vs. 59 percent and 66 percent), or assignment accuracy (47 percent vs. 68 percent and 66 percent). Parents are not asking for less time; they’re asking for evidence that screen time works. This disconnect may stem from a lack of transparency and communication between home and school rather than a problem with the technology itself.
The audit also surfaced where reductions could actually land without faculty pushback: unstructured time. The most obvious lever, particularly in K–8, is ending the use of screens during downtime or as crowd control. For example, Chromebook usage during recess, YouTube videos to keep kids quiet during dismissal, and pre-class scrolling were all cuts parents would fully support. It is important to note that when GoGuardian data was analyzed in K–8, the top three usage cases were Lexia (a reading skill-building program), PebbleGo (a kid-friendly database of nonfiction articles for learning and research), and Google Docs. This is further evidence that the most frequent and common uses of technology at K–8 are for learning, not for passive entertainment.
The Unexpected Payoff
While the lessons learned from the surveys and network traffic analysis were helpful, the curriculum deep dive was potentially transformational. The technology audit forced teachers to truly reflect on when and why they were using technology and how that might need to change given the AI-saturated landscape. When looking across all the assessments and assignments that required technology, a large number of these were at the Substitution level of the SAMR framework. Substitution isn’t inherently bad, and SAMR isn’t a value judgment, but teachers and leaders left the audit wanting more assignments that genuinely take advantage of what technology makes possible, a way to reimagine and redefine learning with work they couldn’t do without technology. The conversations went deeper than coordinators had expected. Teachers found themselves asking: What’s the difference between editing and revising? What does the writing process look like today? Where does AI fit in? DiBuono captured the broader stakes: “AI is giving me an opportunity to say, ‘Wait, hold on—what do we want to hold dear? What do we want to focus on? What do we want to make sure students are able to do?’”
The conversation shifted from screen time reduction to screen time discernment.
Reviewing every curricular unit with teachers helped the whole district think about teaching and learning today, how it aligns with their portrait of a graduate, and how to make changes that address the strategic plan’s essential question: How do we maximize the power of AI and minimize screen time?
What Schools Can Do Next
Westport took a proactive approach to a conversation that is only going to get louder and more intense over the next few years. Rather than respond to concerned parents demanding immediate cuts to screen time in schools, Superintendent Scarice leveraged the district strategic plan to conduct a baseline assessment of technology use first and was very clear with his staff and the community that the use of technology in school is not a binary (to ban or not to ban) but is instead about discerning which screen time is appropriate.
For districts looking to do a similar baseline audit, the order of operations matters. Westport started with the strategic plan question that organized the work, then moved into the curriculum review, and layered in the survey and network data alongside it. Each prong added something the others couldn’t capture, and together they produced a picture no single source would have.
Smaller districts without the resources to engage a research firm like Hanover can adapt the model: a teacher-administered survey, a coordinator-led curriculum review using NotebookLM or a similar tool, and whatever endpoint or network data the district already collects through GoGuardian, Securly, or its filter of choice. The methodology is scalable; the commitment to gathering multiple data points and triangulating perception, curriculum intent, and actual usage is what matters.
Once districts have the data, the real work begins. At Westport, the administration gave a very successful and well-received presentation of the audit results to the board of education. The board immediately eliminated screen use for indoor recess. This was an easily actionable item. Teams can also look at the curricula and areas where teachers might either pull back on tech use or capitalize on it. A teacher should be able to say in one concise sentence why they are using the technology for a particular activity, lesson, or assessment. Finally, teams should share the data and host public forums about what the school or district learned through the audit. Transparency and data-driven conversations can demystify how technology is being used in schools and can dispel overblown concerns of screen time.
Building a Future-Ready District
The stakes are only getting higher: as AI folds into more classroom workflows in the coming years, districts that don’t establish a baseline of how technology is being used now will be making decisions in the dark. Westport’s audit didn’t end the screen time conversation with parents; it started a better one. As Scarice puts it, “The future-ready district will not be the one that gives students the most technology, nor the one that removes technology from learning altogether. It will be the district that teaches students when technology deepens learning; when it distracts from it; and how to remain focused, ethical, creative, and fully human in a world increasingly shaped by intelligent machines.”
