Increased technology use during the COVID-19 pandemic has a lingering effect on young students

By: Eli Dahmah
May 1, 2024.

Jessica Swanson, a 5th-grade teacher at Salem Hills Elementary, has been teaching for 17 years and has never seen students so reluctant to do their work.

“I’ve got kids with pages of missing work that I never used to see. Pages and pages and pages, where I haven’t even been able to even give them a grade because there is so much missing,” said Swanson. “That’s definitely post-pandemic.”

Students use iPads in the classroom to supplement their learning, but they are missing out on learning basic skills in school before technology was integrated into the classroom during the pandemic such as handwriting, spelling and grammar.

Salem Hills Elementary school in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. (Eli Dahmah)

An increase in personal device dependence for children is directly affecting their grades, according to parents and teachers in Minnesota. Schools can use personal devices such as iPads to enhance their learning capabilities, but dependence on those devices caused by social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok has led younger students to care less about schoolwork.

Parents in Minnesota said their children have grown dependent on technology, and their grades in school are dropping. Parents also said their children struggle to focus and attribute it to short-form videos that have taken social media by storm.

Cassandra Rahn, a mother of three school-aged children, said that kids would rather use school devices for social media than their homework.

“They can be very helpful in some cases, every child’s needs are different,” Rahn said. “I think it all depends on what the content is on the tablet. Most kids default to YouTube, and I think that isn’t good. I think kids have no attention span and I think that has a lot to do with the short videos that they watch.”

Teachers and parents also attribute the addiction to online video games and the instant gratification that young children get from them. 

Swanson said students would rather play video games than do any schoolwork.

“All they want to do is be on technology. They want to play games,” Swanson said. “They’re really motivated by games. I think that might be part of the issue too because that’s quick rewards, it's really fast-paced and so they never slow their brains down to really put in that effort.”

Marissa Demma, an Inver Grove Heights resident, said her 6th-grade son spends all of his time playing video games and refuses to do his homework.

“My kid is like full screen time on Xbox and getting him to do anything let alone homework is insane,” Demma said. “He lacks motivation at school and at home. When he is doing anything that isn’t video games, I swear he just stares and twiddles his thumbs.”

Lawsuit Filed Against Meta

Thirty-three states in America have filed lawsuits against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, according to Associated Press. The lawsuits claim that Meta has contributed to the youth mental health crisis by designing features for their platforms that intentionally make it difficult for younger people to stop using the apps.

The lawsuit says Meta’s apps Instagram and Facebook do not comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. 

COPPA requires companies like Meta to acquire express consent from the parents of children younger than 13 using Meta’s platforms before collecting any data from those accounts. According to the lawsuit, Meta repeatedly violates this by not only collecting data without the consent of parents but without even attempting to get consent.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is one of 42 attorneys general involved in the lawsuit against Meta, according to a press release from the Office of Minnesota Attorney General. Ellison said Meta designs their apps to be addicting to people, especially children.

“It’s my job to protect Minnesotans, especially the most vulnerable,” Ellison said. “Meta is very intentionally trying to manipulate our children and teens into spending as much time on their platforms as possible, despite knowing this is causing serious harm.”

Ellison also said Meta has used young people as a vessel for engagement.

“Meta’s efforts to addict our young people and sacrifice their well-being for engagement is disgraceful, predatory, and illegal,” Ellison said.

The four largest school boards in Ontario, Canada, have also filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming that their apps distract students and disrupt their learning, according to Associated Press. 

Test scores on the ACT have also dropped to a 30-year low, falling to an average score of 19.5, according to NPR.

Teachers see changes in their students

Breken Lach, a 5th-grade teacher in Cottage Grove, has noticed many of the side effects of social media use noted in these lawsuits in her students. Lach said she saw shorter attention spans, reluctance to switch activities in class, and low self-esteem in her students. 

“Socially, they’re very low self-esteem. They’re very hard on themselves and hard on each other,” Lach said. “Some of the behaviors and some of the words that I’m hearing from kids, I would not anticipate from kids this age. Really terrible stuff, really threatening stuff. Really horrible, disrespectful, put-down language.”

Lach believes that screen time on social media plays a big part in kids wanting to grow up too fast. She estimates that two-thirds of her students have their own phones and the majority of her students use social media in some way or another every day.

Lach said she has noticed a steep decline in handwriting skills, as well as spelling and grammar in her students.

“Handwriting is atrocious and spelling and grammar, in general, are atrocious also,” Lach said. “A lot of them are typing and texting a lot more, so in general there is a lot less fine motor skills involved. I think that with that ‘hunt-and-peck’ style of typing, there’s not a lot of whole hand movement that is involved, they don't have a lot of hand strength and grip strength to grip their pencil.”

Digital media consumption among people grew dramatically during the pandemic, and young people were no exception. 

Survey data gathered from a 2021 Ipsos study via Statista.

According to the graph, 60% of children ages 8 to 12 watched online videos every day in May-June 2021. That number jumps to 79% for children ages 13 to 18.

Data gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics via Statista.

Data from the Department of Labor statistics shows that reading books declined in kids ages 15-19 in 2020.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the Minnesota Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act into law on May 24, 2023, according to the Minnesota Department of Education.

The READ act is meant to promote reading in classrooms and help children read at their current grade level or above. 

“I think the country as a whole has just regressed, kids are really struggling with reading.” Lach said. “I think this phonics approach to reading, this is what it needs to look like.”