Students Are Learning Less With Technology in Class. So Why Are Schools Still Handing Out Devices?

In 2024, American schools spent $30 billion on educational technology - roughly ten times what they spent on textbooks. That figure is projected to nearly double to $60 billion by 2033. Meanwhile, Generation Z has become the first generation in modern recorded history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before them. Reading scores are down. Math scores are down. Attention spans are down.

So here is the question that parents, educators, and policymakers are increasingly asking out loud: if we are spending more than ever on classroom devices, and students are performing worse than ever, why are we still handing out the devices?

The answer, as with most things in education, is complicated. But the evidence is no longer ambiguous.

The Promise That Didn't Fully Deliver

The logic behind putting a laptop or tablet in every student's hands was intuitive and idealistic. Give children access to the sum of human knowledge, interactive software, and digital learning tools - and surely learning would accelerate. Equity gaps would close. The classroom would be transformed.

About 88% of U.S. public schools now operate a 1-to-1 computing program, providing every student with a school-issued device. Eighty-nine percent of those schools make laptops available; 46% allow students to take their device home on weekends. The infrastructure investment has been staggering, and the rollout nearly universal.

The problem is that access alone does not improve learning. Sweden discovered this the hard way. After decades of aggressive classroom digitization that made it one of the world's most wired education systems, PISA data from 2012 to 2022 showed that the country's one-to-one laptop policy did not improve results and produced small but measurable negative effects in mathematics - particularly among students from less-educated families. By 2024, the Swedish government reversed course, subsidizing textbooks, mandating staffed school libraries, and moving toward a ban on mobile phones during the school day.

Sweden is not alone. The pivot is happening across the developed world, and the research behind it is mounting.

What the Data Actually Shows

The PISA Findings: A Dose-Response Problem

The OECD's PISA 2022 report - the most comprehensive international assessment of 15-year-old students - delivered a finding that should have been front-page news in every country: students who spent up to one hour per day on digital devices for learning outperformed their peers. But beyond that threshold, outcomes declined sharply. Students who spent five to seven hours daily on screens at school scored an average of 49 points lower in mathematics than those who spent under an hour - even after controlling for socioeconomic background.

This is not a marginal difference. In PISA terms, 49 points is equivalent to more than a year of schooling. The relationship between screen time and academic performance follows an inverted-U curve: a little helps, a lot harms. The problem is that most schools have overshot the beneficial range by a significant margin.

Earlier OECD data told a similar story. A 2023 study using PISA 2018 data across 22 OECD countries found an inverted-U relationship between ICT use at school and mathematics performance, with very intensive use causing underperformance equivalent to roughly half an academic year in Estonia, Finland, and Spain.

Distraction Is Not a Side Effect. It Is the Effect.

One in three students across OECD countries reported being distracted by digital devices in most or all of their mathematics classes, according to PISA 2022 data. That is not a glitch in implementation - it is an inherent feature of putting an internet-connected device in the hands of a developing adolescent brain during a lesson about fractions.

A study from the Central University of Punjab found that students using multiple digital devices simultaneously experienced decreased academic performance, increased anxiety, and health issues including sleep disorders. Research from Rutgers University conducted the first classroom experimental study directly connecting in-class cellphone use with lower test scores, establishing a causal rather than merely correlational link.

A particularly sobering figure from distraction research: after a digital distraction, it can take up to 20 minutes for a student to fully refocus. In a 45-minute class where multiple students receive notifications, the compounding cost to collective attention is severe.

More Than Half of School Leaders Know It Is Not Working

According to the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences, more than half of public school leaders report that cell phones hurt academic performance in their schools. This is not an outside critique from researchers. These are the people running the schools, watching it happen every day in their own classrooms.

Yet the devices keep coming. Why?

Why Schools Keep Handing Out Devices

The EdTech Industry Is Enormous - and Incentivized to Grow

The global EdTech market was valued at approximately $123.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $470.7 billion by 2035. This is an industry with the resources and incentive to lobby school boards, fund pilots, and frame device adoption as a matter of educational equity and 21st-century readiness. The framing is powerful - no school board wants to be seen as denying children access to the future.

Research from EdWeek Market Brief has found that approximately 40% of education technology budgets are spent on unused or significantly underutilized tools. The average per-student technology spending in the U.S. sits at $1,449 annually. That is money that could fund smaller class sizes, additional reading specialists, or arts programs - interventions with stronger evidence bases.

The Pandemic Accelerated a Shift That Was Never Fully Evaluated

COVID-19 caused a dramatic increase in device usage in school settings as districts scrambled to enable remote learning. The transition was necessary and, in many cases, impressive. But when in-person schooling resumed, the devices stayed - without a rigorous evaluation of whether the pandemic-era deployment model should become permanent.

Many schools simply never developed the governance frameworks, teacher training, or pedagogical structures needed to use devices well. The devices became fixtures, and questioning them began to feel like questioning modernity itself.

Digital Equity Is a Real Concern - With a Complicated Answer

The digital divide is real: 98% of U.S. schools have computers, but access at home varies dramatically by income. For students without home computers or reliable internet, school devices provide genuine value - for homework, research, and digital skill development.

But this legitimate equity argument has sometimes been used to short-circuit nuanced conversations about how, when, and how much technology should be used in the classroom. Access to devices is not the same as effective learning with devices. And as the evidence increasingly shows, indiscriminate device use may actually widen outcome gaps, since low-achieving students stand to lose more from unrestricted access than high-achieving ones.

What Actually Works: The Nuanced Picture

To be fair to the research, the answer is not "ban all devices." It is far more specific than that.

Moderate, Purposeful Use Helps - Excessive Use Harms

The clearest finding in the literature is dose-dependence. PISA 2022 data shows that students using devices moderately for learning - up to three hours per day on weekends - perform better and report a greater sense of belonging at school. The problem is not technology. The problem is unstructured, unmonitored, excessive technology use in environments designed for focused cognitive work.

The OECD's own position statement captures this well: "Technology can amplify great teaching, but great technology cannot replace poor teaching." The device is a tool. The quality of instruction using the tool is what determines the outcome.

Combined Approaches and Specific Subjects Matter

A 2024 meta-analysis of 148 randomized controlled trials found that exercise training produced significant improvements of 3.5-11.7% across all measured outcomes - a useful parallel illustrating that combined approaches outperform single-modality ones. In education research, the same principle applies: combined aerobic and resistance exercise is optimal for health management, just as combined instructional approaches - including judicious technology use alongside direct instruction, handwriting, and discussion - are optimal for learning outcomes.

ICT appears to be more effective for developing computational and digital problem-solving skills than for traditional reading comprehension and mathematics. PISA 2025 prototype data from Germany found that using computers as part of regular instruction in core subjects increased students' ability to solve digital-environment problems, while time spent on devices for reading was time not spent on activities strongly associated with improved reading comprehension - such as reading extracts from books and newspapers.

The tool matches the task. The problem is that schools have not always been discriminating about which tasks devices actually improve.

Phone Bans: Mixed Evidence, Some Clear Wins

The international wave of phone bans in schools - France in 2017, China in 2018, Canada in 2019, the Netherlands in January 2024, and a growing majority of U.S. states as of 2025 - reflects genuine public concern. But the evidence on bans is mixed.

The most cited positive study, from the London School of Economics, found that phone bans in UK schools were associated with improved academic performance, with the largest gains for low-achieving students. Banning smartphones in Belgium, Spain, and the United Kingdom has in some studies improved academic performance, particularly among lower-achieving students.

However, a rigorous Swedish study using quasi-experimental methods found no measurable impact of mobile phone bans on student performance. And a 2025 BMJ analysis found no connection between restricted phone use and improvements in academic performance, mental health, or classroom behavior in England.

A 2024 U.S. study found that after implementing locked phone pouches (Yondr), student academic success rates increased by up to 6.27%, accompanied by a 44% decrease in average monthly behavioral referrals. The policy works in some contexts, under some conditions. Consistency and enforcement appear to matter more than the ban itself.

The Equity Dimension: Who Gets Hurt Most?

The equity argument for devices assumes that all students benefit equally from technology access. The research says otherwise. Across OECD countries, low-achieving students are more likely to use digital devices for non-academic purposes during class, including social media, gaming, and video - a pattern driven by lower motivation, higher boredom thresholds, and less developed self-regulation.

This means that blanket 1:1 device programs, without structured pedagogical frameworks, may inadvertently widen the achievement gap they were designed to close. The students most likely to use devices well are those with stronger executive function, higher baseline achievement, and more parental engagement at home. The students most likely to be harmed by unstructured device access are those the equity argument is most concerned about.

The OECD data suggests that the best way to eliminate distractions is a full ban on devices during class time - but the best way to improve outcomes is structured, purposeful integration, with clear usage boundaries. These two goals are not mutually exclusive.

What a Better Approach Looks Like

None of this is an argument for turning back the clock. Digital skills are genuinely important for the labor market, and students do need to develop competence with technology. But the current approach - ubiquitous, unstructured, unrestricted - is not serving that goal well either.

A more evidence-based model would include the following elements:

Task-specific use. Devices are available for specific learning tasks - research, coding, digital creation, simulation - and stored during direct instruction, reading, discussion, and test-taking. The device is a specialist tool, not a universal substitute for a pencil and a book.

Teacher training that actually matters. Effective technology integration requires teachers who know how to leverage devices pedagogically - not just technically. This means funded professional development, not a one-day onboarding session. Teacher capacity is the limiting factor in almost every successful edtech deployment.

Clear norms around personal devices. School-issued devices used for learning and personal smartphones are different problems. Many schools conflate them. Personal smartphone management - through locked pouches, collection at the door, or restricted access during class periods - is a lower-cost, higher-evidence intervention than replacing the entire device fleet.

Deliberate analog time. Handwriting is not an anachronism. Research consistently shows that taking notes by hand produces stronger retention and deeper processing than typing. Sustained reading from physical books develops concentration and reading comprehension in ways that screen-based reading does not. These activities deserve protected time in the school day.

Rigorous evaluation before scaling. Approximately 40% of EdTech tools purchased by schools are unused or significantly underutilized. Every significant technology adoption should be preceded by a pilot, followed by outcome measurement, and evaluated against the counterfactual. What would we have done with that $1,449 per student per year if we hadn't bought the device?