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A bipartisan wave of legislation is pulling phones and devices out of classrooms across the U.S.

Generative AI already shapes how students search, write, and consume information outside school walls.

In 2026 alone, 134 bills requiring AI literacy have been introduced across 31 states.

The edtech backlash is an opportunity to put teachers—not screens—at the center of learning.

Years ago, my husband and I enrolled our children in a public charter Waldorf school — a pedagogy well-known for limiting screens in the classroom and encouraging families to do the same at home. Then I launched a digital literacy curriculum inside its walls.

You might wonder: Why teach kids about technology in a place built on keeping it out?

The answer, which seemed obvious to me then, feels absolutely urgent today: restriction without education doesn’t work. My kids didn’t need to be on screens all day to learn how to think critically about a digital world waiting for them outside the school door. But they absolutely did need to learn how to use screens wisely. So they got both—screen-free time to build important social-emotional capacities and a robust digital literacy education.

That experience taught me something instructive for today: banning screens and teaching kids about them don’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, mutually exclusive.

Across the country, schools have been banning cellphones from classrooms with a hair-on-fire urgency. By early 2026, twenty-six states had mandated full bans; at least thirty-seven states and Washington, D.C., have enacted some form of cellphone restriction. But phones, it turns out, were just the beginning.

Now the ban has expanded to all screens. At least 17 states are considering bills to restrict school-issued devices during the school day. In fact, the Los Angeles Unified School District—right in my own backyard—just became the first major district to impose screen time limits on school-issued devices, requiring grade-by-grade policies and prohibiting use for students in first grade and younger. Alabama and Utah have already signed laws into effect; Utah's law bans screens entirely in grades K–3, except for computer science standards, and requires a balance between digital and analog instruction in grades 4–6. At least four other states are considering similar device restrictions in elementary school.

This is understandable. With phones out of sight, schools began reporting improved student socialization and engagement. Parents urged schools to extend that success to all screens, figuring that reducing digital distraction during the school day would give kids space to be kids. I get it; it’s what I wanted for my own children. But not at the expense of preparation.

After all, we can’t lose sight of what lies on the other side of the walls we’re building: an increasingly complex digital world fueled by AI.

Generative AI is already embedded in nearly every aspect of a child's life—in their search results, their Google Docs, their social media feeds. It writes their captions and populates their group chats with AI-generated images and video. By the time a student graduates, they will enter a world where AI shapes every online interaction, every job application, and every piece of information they consume.

At the exact same moment schools are banning phones and other devices, they are being pushed to prepare students for this AI-everywhere world. In 2026 alone, 134 bills related to AI in education have been introduced across 31 states. Many require AI literacy in curriculum standards. States like Georgia and Mississippi are building AI instruction into graduation requirements.

Why Education Is Important

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Conflicting impulses appear to be pulling schools in opposite directions. But there is another way.

Human-Centered Classrooms Are Well-Equipped to Deliver AI Literacy

Banning phones and reducing screen time doesn't make it harder to teach digital and AI literacy. It may actually make it easier.

Students don’t need technology to learn about it. What they need is a skilled teacher, a rich discussion, and the space to build critical thinking. That's exactly what a human-centered classroom provides, and it's precisely what prepares kids best to grasp the complexities of intelligence that is artificial. Research shows teacher-led media literacy instruction builds critical thinking habits that apply across platforms, technologies, and contexts.

For example, a teacher can lead a classroom discussion about how a chatbot generates text, but makes mistakes. They can explain what a deepfake is, and discuss the implications of a society getting duped by them. They can get kids to recount the many recommendation algorithms they see and how they manipulate—all without handing them a device. This human-mediated learning happens through conversation, critical thinking, and guided analysis. Age-old methods for new world challenges.

States Are Already Doing This

Several states are already pairing restriction with education. Tennessee's Teen Social Media and Internet Safety Act requires digital safety curricula for grades 6-12 that includes evaluating AI-generated information. This is paired with their banning of the use of cellphones during classroom instruction. North Carolina paired its phone ban with a requirement that schools include instruction on social media and mental health in their curricula. These states aren’t choosing between restriction and education. They’re doing both: restriction and education—with the education part delivered by teachers, not screens.

By building walls alone, we'll always be playing catch-up. Each new technology requires a new wall. Eventually, we'll run out of bricks.

While bans and restrictions offer temporary fixes, digital and AI literacy build lasting protective factors. Knowing to ask: "Who made this? What's the evidence? What's missing? How might this be manipulating me?" are durable skills. The schools getting this right are treating this odd moment of edtech backlash as an opportunity to return the teacher to the center of the room, and to build the kind of human-led learning environment where lasting literacy education can happen.

I learned long ago that a low-tech learning environment can still prepare children for a high-tech world. The two were never in conflict. The conflict was always a failure of imagination—a belief that the only way to teach about technology is to teach with technology.

The classroom that puts down devices and picks up the discussion may be doing more to prepare students for an AI world than any screen ever could.

Hodgin, E., & Kahne, J. (2018). Misinformation in the information age. Social Education, 82(4), 207–212.

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