The pushback on AI and data centers is widespread and real, but parents seem a lot less worried about the devices that have overrun their kids’ classrooms. For all the attention to the recent Meta litigation and the push to ban cell phones in schools, parents haven’t urged educators to resist the cascade of ed tech represented by Chromebooks, iPads, Canvas, i-Ready, and Kahoot. If anything, they have welcomed these devices and programs into their children’s education and daily lives.

As I noted a few weeks back at Law & Liberty:

Earlier this summer, EdChoice reported that 86 percent of parents support using laptops in class, 84 percent support the use of online learning platforms, 80 percent support the use of online learning games, and 60 percent support the use of AI in class. Hart Research has found that 74 percent of parents describe ed tech as positive for their child’s learning and 54 percent say they want their school to use more technology going forward.

Why the continued warm feelings towards “educational” tech, even as polls evince a broader turn against Big Tech? I suspect two things are going on. One is the eternal allure of “future-ready” schools. Parents don’t want their kids to be left behind. Since schools are struggling and the world is changing, they hope a classroom full of cool tech means their kids will be up to speed. There’s also a deep-seated impulse to trust that educators know what they’re doing—that the devices and software are being put to sensible use.

But parents may yet awaken to the harm that a device-driven culture of corner-cutting and distraction is visiting upon their kids. If they do, I suspect efforts like the Fordham Institute’s new report, High Tech, Low Standards: High School in the Age of Distraction, will have helped.

The report, authored by Fordham’s Brian Fitzpatrick, shares the findings from a national survey of 1,000 high schoolers and another 1,000 recent high school grads. The results are sobering, if unsurprising. Three-quarters of respondents reported using some kind of “illicit” technology daily during school hours—50 percent of respondents said they use social media (like TikTok or Instagram) at least once a day in school, 33 percent said the same about watching YouTube videos, and 17 percent about shopping online.

The distraction problem isn’t just about sneaking and peeking, though. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they spend more than half their class time on school-issued devices. Nearly one-in-three students said they spend more than three-quarters of class time on screens. In short: Most students are spending most of the school day on screens before we ever factor in the time they illicitly spend on their personal devices.

Moreover, for all the suggestions that AI tutoring will bolster instruction, students are clear that they mostly use it to evade the rigors of learning. Forty-eight percent of students reported using AI to solve their math problems for them, 36 percent to summarize books or texts to avoid reading them, and 29 percent to pen the first drafts of their essays or reports. Twenty-six percent reported using AI for help during quizzes and tests. (That’s what us Gen X types used to call “cheating.”)

When asked to respond to statements about the effects of AI on school, 58 percent of students agreed that it’s made homework meaningless and 57 percent that it lets students get good grades without doing any real work. Technology is fostering a classroom culture where students give the impression of learning while the school day becomes a shrinking circle of videos, memes, and chatbot-supplied shortcuts.

Studies documenting the adverse effects of devices can be complicated and abstract. But survey results from students themselves admitting that most of them spend most of the school day on devices (with regular forays into illicit distraction) make the implications clear and concrete.

Here’s one very practical consequence: Fitzpatrick reports that students who spend more class time on devices are more likely to say that missing school won’t affect their grades. This tracks with recent speculation that ed tech is fueling chronic absenteeism, as students conclude it doesn’t much matter whether they stare at screens at school or at home.

Am I arguing that ed tech is “bad” for kids? No. I mean, I’ve written at length about the ways in which it can be a powerful tool of learning. The problem is that, in practice, 21st-century technologies have too rarely been used that way. I’ve long thought that parents should be angrier about this than they’ve shown themselves to be.

It’s never been clear if the prevalent parental lassitude towards classroom tech is because caregivers are unaware what kids actually do all day in “21st century” schools or because they’re reluctant to stand athwart “progress” when they’ve long been told that one-to-one devices are a key to their children’s future. Either way, enough research like Fordham’s might finally help get parents to appreciate the real-world consequences of how all that cutting-edge classroom tech is getting used.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”