Technology in the Classroom:
Mastering the Tool Rather than Making the Tool the Master
By Traci C. Eshelman, PhD
"The answer is not more surveillance, but more companionship."- Dylan Cane, 2026
Education has lost its mind and is losing its students’ minds. My early ed tech experience in the classroom paralleled that of Dylan Cane, a seventh-grade teacher in Colorado. I was an early adopter, rigging outdated technology to play group games through a TV on a cart. I connected my iPad, divided the children into two groups, and one by one, they would come up to submit answers or work together as I controlled the app. When the school bought one cart of iPads, one cart for an entire school, I signed up once a week so my kids could increase their vocabulary. Five minutes of rote drills, followed by thirty‑five minutes of group games and conversation. Time on tech: five minutes. Time interacting: thirty‑five. It worked. By sixth grade, most of my students were conversational in Spanish and could say basic phrases in six other languages.
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We didn’t use iPads every day. We used them once a week, briefly, and always with intention. The rest of the time, I used technology the way you’d use a Smart Board, except with a TV and an HDMI cord instead of a $10,000 device. With a little creativity, you can explore the world on a shoestring budget. My students wandered through Madrid, seeing how families lived in apartments instead of farmhouses, and in Rio they saw the favelas on an old TV, not a fleet of Chromebooks or a $10,000 Smartboard, and they were engaged.
There is no doubt that technology is amazing. I have an ed‑tech company, for crying out loud. All my research involves AI and ed tech. But somewhere along the way, we made the tool our master rather than mastering the tool. Technology was never meant to be the pilot. It should be the dashboard. The teacher drives. Education should not be a self‑driving car. And yet we hand children devices engineered to capture attention and then wonder why they can’t stay on task. Kids are more distracted than ever, and instead of removing the distraction, we spoon‑feed it to them.
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I’m not saying remove technology. I’m saying retool it. Restore it to its purpose: a tool, not a replacement. As Cane told The Atlantic, “The answer is not more surveillance, but more companionship” (Anderson, 2026). Analytics can be brilliant when used to engage and guide, not when used as a substitute for human connection. Teaching is relational. Children need relationships. When used properly, technology can strengthen those relationships rather than wedge itself between them. It can promote teamwork, exploration, and even mediate difficult conversations. In my own study on writing, students were more open to critique when the feedback came through an AI tool rather than directly from the teacher (Eshelman, 2024). The computer became the intermediary, preserving the relationship and opening the door to real dialogue about improvement.
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But there is a difference between using a tool wisely and handing it to a child and walking away. The data is now clear about what unstructured, high‑volume screen time is doing to our children. Twenge and Campbell’s (2018) study of over 40,000 children found that after just one hour of daily screen time, children showed lower psychological well‑being: less curiosity, less self‑control, more distraction, and more difficulty making friends. That was one hour a day. Today, we ask children to sit in front of screens for four to six hours a day in school, and that is before they even touch their phones. Research shows that adolescents logging seven or more hours daily were twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression (Mohd Saat et al., 2024). In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy reinforced these findings: adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on screens face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023).
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And then there is the social piece, where my heart really lives. MIT professor Sherry Turkle (2015) spent five years studying what happens when face‑to‑face conversation is replaced with screens. Students were making acquaintances, but the connections were superficial. An empathy gap had opened. Face‑to‑face conversation is where we learn to read emotions, sit in discomfort, and listen. When we replace that with screens, we miss that sometimes uncomfortable interaction that we navigate, which in turn nurtures relationships. We lose the practice of being human with one another.
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Meanwhile, neuroscience explains what this is doing to our children’s brains. The prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for self‑regulation, impulse control, sustained focus, and judgment, is not fully developed until around age 25. It begins pruning around age 11 and is the last region to mature (Casey, Jones, & Hare, 2008). Yet we hand a twelve‑year‑old a Chromebook and say, “Stay on task,” while the device is engineered by the world’s most sophisticated behavioral scientists to do the opposite. That ask is unreasonable. Cane saw this firsthand. Even when he restricted use, told students to shut the screen, or tried to redirect them, something pulled them back into the abyss.
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The social and emotional consequences compound the cognitive ones. Adolescence is a period of heightened sensitivity to peer influence and social context (Casey et al., 2008). Students are trying to self‑regulate academically on a device while simultaneously managing social comparison and emotional reactivity. Asking them to do sustained academic work in a digitally connected environment without structured scaffolding jeopardizes critical relationship‑building with peers and teachers.
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The evidence points in the same direction: less is more, and the teacher must remain in the driver’s seat. My own classroom practice, five minutes of focused tech, followed by thirty‑five minutes of human interaction, aligns with the strongest findings in cognitive science. Roediger and Butler (2011) demonstrated that active retrieval practice produces significantly stronger long‑term retention than passive screen‑based review. This is why Cane’s pencil‑and‑paper retrieval exercises outperformed digital ones. Slowing students down made their thinking visible.
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John Hattie’s sweeping meta‑analysis of over 800 studies found that teacher‑student relationships are among the highest impact factors in education, with an effect size of 0.72 (Hattie, 2009). Educational technology ranks far lower. The greatest predictor of learning is whether students feel known, seen, and cared for by an adult in the room. Cane discovered this the moment he ditched the Chromebooks. He could see his students again, and they could see him. They reconnected. That is when teaching happens.
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My own research on writing instruction reinforces this. When AI delivered writing feedback, often seen as criticism, students stayed open. The relationship stayed intact. The revision process, mediated by dialogue and trust, was restored. But it only works when the teacher remains central to learning. Technology is the bridge, not the destination.
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Which brings us back to Cane’s solution. In January 2026, he removed the Chromebooks for a month. Assignment completion among his lowest‑performing students jumped from 45 to 62 percent. A simple shift, removing the distraction, revealed what the research had been telling us all along. Developmental neuroscience confirms that our children do not have the cognitive, social, or emotional skills to spend four to six hours a day on a computer (Casey et al., 2008; Twenge & Campbell, 2018). The Surgeon General warned us in 2023. And a dedicated math teacher in Colorado proved it by simply looking up from the screen and watching what happened.
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Technology in education should be like a car’s dashboard: it provides critical information, helps you navigate, and supports your journey. But it should not drive. The teacher drives. Somewhere along the way, we let the dashboard of a driverless car replace common sense and the relationships that make learning possible. Cane gave up the Chromebooks for a month and reconnected with his students. The data had been there all along. We just needed to look up long enough to read it.
References
Anderson, J. (2026, April 6). What happened after a teacher ditched screens?  The Atlantic.
Casey, B. J., Getz, S., & Galvan, A. (2008). The adolescent brain. Developmental review, 28(1), 62-77.
Eshelman, T. C. (2024). Exploring High School Teacher and Student Engagement with the Wisdom. K12 Automated Writing Evaluation Tool in the Northeastern United States: A Multiple Intrinsic Case Study. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET, 23(4), 87-101.
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. routledge.
Mohd Saat, N. Z., Hanawi, S. A., Hanafiah, H., Ahmad, M., Farah, N. M., & Abdul Rahman, N. A. A. (2024). Relationship of screen time with anxiety, depression, and sleep quality among adolescents: a cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1459952.
Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). We Must Take Action: A Way Forward. In Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory [Internet]. US Department of Health and Human Services.
Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in cognitive sciences, 15(1), 20-27.
Turkle, S. (2015).  Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age. Penguin Press.
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive Medicine Reports, 12, 271-283.