Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation,” has parents across the country questioning whether they should give their children access to social media and other technology platforms.
Frankly, parents should be worried, especially since the federal government just gave schools more open access to these platforms.
Removing these devices from schools is paramount to fostering children’s intellectual growth and promoting their mental health. As Matt Yglesias so aptly points out:
I have written“The purpose of the app is to drive engagement and usage, and the purpose of the school is to get people off scrolling through social media apps.” This is not a hypothesis. Schools that have made these changes have seen positive results. One example is a recentToday ShowDistricts reported benefits including measurable improvements in reading and math assessments, as well as improved social interactions between students and teachers.
Some schools place restrictions on what your child can access on the school Wi-Fi network.
So why did Biden’s Federal Communications Commission enact measures to keep these devices in schools without adult supervision?
Frankly, children’s unsupervised internet access in schools, where the US government subsidizes Wi-Fi, is largely ignored by policymakers and advocates who claim to care about children’s online experiences. Late last year, the Biden FCC forced through a proposal through a mysterious program called E-Rate to give schools millions of dollars of taxpayer money to cover the cost of Wi-Fi on school buses. The Biden administration claimed this modification to E-Rate would give kids more time to access the internet on school buses and close the “homework gap.” But in reality, it has created new opportunities for bullying and exploitation.
This is dangerous because a lot can happen on a school bus. Some local school districts report an average of 75 calls a day about incidents on school buses. This statistic makes sense. First, there is only one adult on a school bus, usually the driver, who has his or her eyes on the road. The driver has no overall supervision of the kids, and no way to monitor whether they are bypassing the school firewall and accessing harmful content via VPN. To make matters worse, some kids are on the school bus for hours, five days a week. To make matters worse, elementary school kids share buses with older and even high school kids. Imagine the kind of adult content younger kids would be exposed to in that environment.
And did the FCC think it was wise to give a 5-year-old unlimited access to the internet at no cost to their parents?
This is especially concerning given that many local governments have fought to remove these devices from schools.
Connecticut To IowaSchool districts have enacted bans or limits on screen time on school grounds. This is the highest form of local control. Communities recognize that smartphone screen time can undermine educational efforts. Communities should have the power to come together and make the decisions that are best for their students.
The fact that the federal government is spending millions of dollars to unfairly encourage these local decisions is unjust. The FCC is effectively forcing local governments to abandon local policies because it knows that cash-strapped public school districts will not waste their money. Instead of leaving them to make a Hobson’s choice, Congress should immediately cut the programs that undermine these local decisions and reduce the impact of unchecked device access.
Whether in the classroom or on a yellow school bus, how devices are managed in schools should be left to parents and local school districts, not the federal government, especially when children are in unsupervised spaces like the back of the bus, where the potential for bullying and access to adult content increases.
Thankfully, two unlikely bipartisans are trying to do just that. Earlier this year, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in initiating a bill that would see Republicans step down from the White House.
Board OversightThe bipartisan bill would prohibit schools that receive FCC funding from accessing social media platforms on subsidized services, devices, or networks. The bill seeks to back recent efforts by parents and school district officials to mitigate the harm caused by the influence of big tech companies on school life.
Congress has an opportunity to help parents and teachers by eliminating the FCC. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on a program that puts students at risk, Congress must end this program that actually undermines efforts to help students.
