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A new survey shows that many Wake County teachers think their students are spending too much time in class on their Chromebooks and that it’s creating a learning distraction.
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Data presented at Tuesday’s Wake County school board meeting shows average screen time in school for Wake students is more than 90 minutes a day in most middle school and high school grade levels. A majority of secondary school teachers said that’s too much screen time and that the devices are often an instructional distraction.
The survey data comes as the district is discussing whether to change its approach of providing a device for every student. Some parents, students and educators argue that screen time needs to be cut back.
“We aren’t asking to completely remove devices and digital learning from schools,” Divya Chinta, a freshman at Green Level High School in Cary, said at the Oct. 6 school board meeting. “We understand that there are some things in the curriculum that can simply not be taught on paper.
“All we ask is that schools in Wake County implement a low-tech policy and use tech as a tool, not as a teacher.”
Before the pandemic, few school districts provided computers for all students that could be taken home.
But things changed in 2020, when schools used one-time federal COVID relief aid to buy devices for students to use at home during remote instruction. Wake provides an iPad to pre-K students and a Chromebook for other students.
Wake gives students a new device every three years. But only students in grades 3 through 12 can take their devices home with them.
Average screen time is lowest in elementary schools, ranging from 21.6 minutes a day in kindergarten to 61.8 minutes a day in fifth grade.
Average screen time rises above 90 minutes a day in sixth grade through 11th grade. It drops to 77.4 a minutes a day for high school seniors and 34.2 minutes a day for “grade 13,” which are early college high school students who are in their fifth year.
Despite the numbers, administrators say the highest use in Wake is 60 minutes less per day than the national average.
A majority of elementary school teachers who took the district survey said the amount of screen time is just right.
But 54% of the middle school teachers and 49.8% of the high school teachers said the screen time was too much. Only 31% of the middle school teachers and 37% of the high school teachers felt the screen time was just right.
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Secondary school teachers were also more vocal when asked how often they find themselves competing with the device for student attention during direct instruction. The answer was frequent or almost always for 54% of middle school teachers, 52% of high school teachers and 18% for elementary school teachers.
Like most North Carolina school districts, Wake doesn’t have the money to replace all of its aging devices. Wake is deciding how much to scale back, especially at early elementary school grades.
But 56% of the PreK-2 teachers said having enough devices for every student is essential. Additionally, 61% of PreK-2 teachers said it would hinder instruction if they didn’t have 1:1 devices for their students.
“We use tech for a short period of time during intervention daily,” a Fuquay-Varina Elementary teacher said in Wake’s presentation. “I need all students to have access to a device during that time.”
A Pleasant Plains Elementary second-grade teacher warned that having to share devices would put more stress on teachers in order to do their required assessments, interventions and progress monitoring.
“Don’t we have enough stress as it is?” the Pleasant Plains teacher added.
Tuesday’s discussion comes two weeks after a group of students and adults spoke out at a school board meeting about what they felt was excessive computer use in school.
“Every teacher begins the class by saying, ‘Open your Chromebooks.’ And what happens is that we as students have to navigate a complicated world of apps, portals, login screens, passwords, and so much more,” said Srinithi Santhanakrishnan, a seventh-grade student at Mills Park Middle School in Cary. “By the end of the day, every one of us has been on a screen for so long that our eyes start to strain. And we all are left with throbbing headaches.”
Several students praised the low-tech policy at Highcroft Drive Elementary school in Cary, saying it’s cut back on screen use.
“Why do we even have Chromebooks if we don’t know how to type?” said Pratika Nelli, a fifth-grade student at Highcroft. “Before the low-tech policy, many of us were forced to type on the computers and do notes, but we didn’t even know what all the letters were. For example, we spent so much time trying to find the letter O.”
Dr. Dwight Barnes, the owner of Cary Family Eye Center, told the school board about all the young patients he’s treating for myopia. He blamed the rising number of cases of nearsightedness on patients’ screen time.
“Does every worksheet and test need to be on a Chromebook?” Barnes said. “Does every reading assignment need to be on a screen? Can we alternate digital activities with paper and classroom discussion and hands-on learning?”
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This story was originally published October 20, 2026 at 5:45 AM.