Just Like Smartphones, EdTech Is Terrible for Children, Skill Development, and Mental Health.
Guest Post by Natalie Houston, LPC: What a licensed professional counselor has witnessed professionally and in the classroom and some ideas for school leaders on how to make changes.
Note from Emily: When Natalie emailed me a copy of the written testimony she submitted to the National Telecommunications and Information Agency hearing on December 10, 2025, I asked her permission to share it on my Substack to show more examples of First Fish friends doing First Fish things. As a mental health professional, Natalie sees the impact of screentime in her clinical environment, but her examples of what she has witnessed as a volunteer in her own children’s classrooms should force all of us to stop and think about what we are doing when we give iPads to elementary school students in the name of “education,” too.
Spoiler: It’s not just the smartphones, folks.
My name is Natalie Houston and I am a licensed professional counselor in clinical practice in Bend, Oregon. I am also a mother and stepmother of four kids, three of whom are currently in K-12 public school. I have been working with children, adolescents, and adults in private practice for 15 years. I speak regularly in schools on the topic of digital devices and youth mental health as well as serving as a member of the Bend-La Pine School District Education Technology Stakeholder Committee and a member of the Screens in Schools workgroup organized by Fairplay.
In my practice, I have been developing greater and greater concern about the impact of technology on children and adolescents as I am seeing increasing numbers of youth and families seeking services related to tech overuse, social media harms, negative impacts from viewing pornography and other inappropriate content (at younger and younger ages), and disordered online gaming.
In the past few years, I am also seeing disturbing trends among adolescents with fragmented attention, shallow thinking, and the inability to sit through the length of a standard counseling session without checking their phones or becoming visibly agitated and anxious when they can’t. I am hearing Gen Z clients regretting “wasted years” in adolescence and wishing their parents had stricter device rules so they could have a more “normal” childhood.
I am deeply concerned that schools are normalizing over-reliance on digital devices early in children’s lives when their brains are still developing by providing 1:1 access to devices starting as young as five years old (in many other school districts, not just my own) and the rollout of curriculum delivered via digital devices. It is also disturbing to learn that my district does not allow parents to opt out of digital devices because the school curriculum is now completely dependent on this mechanism of delivery. (Note from Emily: This is exactly it. See my essay about the enmeshment problem in EdTech).
Mental health research clearly indicates that the earlier in life a person starts using an addictive substance, the more likely they are to develop a substance use disorder in adulthood.
So what are we thinking when we give kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders access to devices that are designed to maximize engagement (thereby activating the dopamine reward pathways in the brain-- the addiction centers of the brain) with bright colors, sounds, badges, gamified education programs using the same reinforcement principles as slot machines in Las Vegas (such as DreamBox, Lexia, and Epic) and now, even worse, interactive artificial intelligence that mimics social relationships, arguably even more likely to result in problematic use?
“Mental health research clearly indicates that the earlier in life a person starts using an addictive substance, the more likely they are to develop a substance use disorder in adulthood.” -Natalie Houston, LPC
As another concern, when I have volunteered in my children’s elementary classrooms, I have witnessed misuse of iPads time and time again. I have observed students sneaking off-topic content when bored, using the front facing camera to make funny faces with friends, students using the audio feature when “reading” books during reading time instead of reading books (i.e., the book is being read to them), and accessing inappropriate content despite rigorous content filters our school district IT department has put in place.
Below is a screenshot of a third grader’s iPad that I came across one day when volunteering. This is elementary school. The stories of how adolescents find workarounds to content filters and misuse iPads are even more disturbing. A recent analysis by our school district revealed that the number one app accessed by our middle and high school students last year was YouTube, and that use was not driven by classroom video assignments. The devices are being used to access reels and highly addictive videos for entertainment. Our current tech policies in public schools are failing our youth.
This is all happening when our youth’s brains are at their most adaptable— they are still being formed to the environment that they grow up in. And the environment we are providing for them is more and more digitally saturated, fueled by big tech profit motives that are at odds with what is best for children’s healthy development: academically, socially, and in terms of mental health.
As a clinician, I have treated numerous adolescents with problematic and disruptive use of digital devices, not limited to their cell phone but including school-issued iPads or Chromebooks. I have treated several cases that follow the same pattern:
An adolescent becomes addicted to pornography or gaming on their school iPad (accessed through clever workarounds), often in the high school bathroom or home as a way to escape the difficulties of school and life.
The individual drops out of high school and spirals in a never-ending cycle of shame, addictive use, self-blame, more shame, and more use to escape.
These cases often require several years for the individual to recover, rebuild their self-esteem, skills and life.
Clinically, we are now seeing new psychiatric diagnostic categories created to reflect these phenomena, such as “internet use disorder” and “gaming disorder.”
Regarding smartphone bans in schools, thirty-four states have now enacted some kind of smartphone ban in schools. However, knowing how addiction, rewards, and motivation work in the brain, many of our youth will likely now turn to their school devices to fulfill the “needs” their smartphones have created, fueling inappropriate use and distraction, and putting even more pressure on teachers to monitor appropriate use.
I have observed in classrooms time and time again when the teachers’ precious resources are diverted to policing school device use instead of teaching (e.g., kids with their backs against the wall so the teacher can’t see what they are doing, kids switching back to the acceptable use when the teacher walks by, or kids tricking gamified learning apps so the content doesn’t get progressively more difficult so the student’s task remains easy). This will increase teacher burnout and further reduce academic outcomes as the effect size of a positive student/teacher relationship is .91, far more significant than any EdTech product and a critical factor in a student’s academic success.
“Though 34 states have now enacted some kind of smartphone ban in schools, many of our youth will likely now turn to their school devices to fulfill the “needs” their smartphones have created, fueling inappropriate use and distraction, and putting even more pressure on teachers to monitor appropriate use.” -Natalie Houston, LPC
None of these examples address the perhaps an even more important question as it relates to school policy: Are these devices and methods of curriculum delivery even effective? It turns out, no: More and more research is indicating that the more schools digitize, the worse students perform.
My efforts to bring these concerns to school district leadership have gone nowhere. Not because leadership doesn’t care, but because people are overworked, understaffed, and, as I have learned recently from tech industry professionals, school districts are seen as “sticky” customers for their products, making them easy targets for heavy-handed EdTech marketing campaigns because schools are a) slow to change owing to bureaucracy and b) locked into multi-year contracts, rendering them powerless to pivot, even when new information becomes available. With our children’s education and developing brains on the line, this is completely unacceptable, especially as we are now seeing a firehose of research about the ineffectiveness of learning through digital products.
So we must ask our school leaders for help: Please consider doing all that you can to reduce our schools’ reliance on digital devices. My recommended priorities:
Mandate that public schools provide the option to opt out of digital devices and provide non-digital alternatives.
Prohibit schools from issuing 1:1 devices until middle school., i.e., eliminate 1:1s in all elementary schools, and even then, increase rigor on criteria for when to use each app and devices.
Invest reduced tech costs (including the ever-increasing cost of adding safeguards, monitoring software, etc.) in hiring more teachers to reduce burdens on teachers and increase effectiveness of instruction.
Shift focus from education being delivered through technology (curriculum on devices, i.e.,“EdTech”) to “tech education” (keyboarding skills, research skills, coding, word processing, video editing, etc.), which is vital for today’s youth growing up in a digital world.
Establish limits on how much time students can spend on devices (schools in Madrid, Spain did this recently).
Do not allow iPads and Chromebooks to go home with students and return to paper based methods of doing homework, like this public middle school in Kansas, which is critical now anyway with rampant cheating due to GenAI tools embedded within EdTech products.
Thank you for all you are doing for our children. Your leadership is critical to our navigating this new territory. Let’s raise the next generation to be equipped for the challenges they face by preserving their ability to use technology, not be used by technology.
Natalie Houston, LPC, Insight Counseling Group, Bend, Oregon
P.S. from Emily: If your child has accessed inappropriate content on a school-issued device, please contact Andy and Julie Liddell at the EdTech Law Center. They are being flooded with examples of harms being done to children via EdTech products. You are not alone, and change will happen.
Well said, Natalie!!