Giving Compass' Take:

• EdSurge interviews a few education and tech experts to gauge their ideas on how much screen time they consider to be too much for children and why. 

• Some experts say that it is not about the time on screens, but the content that children are watching. How can funders help to identify the types of content and amount of time spent on screen that are most beneficial for children? 

• Read about the harms caused by too much screen time for kids.

The digital divide between rich and poor students isn’t what it used to be. As more devices find their way into homes, screen time across the socioeconomic spectrum is growing. But some more affluent parents are starting to pull back, setting stricter limits on device use both in and out of the classroom.

That was the focus of a recent New York Times article, which noted that even as America’s public schools promote the use of devices, others are banning screens from class. In the article, Nellie Bowles discussed how “throwback” play-based preschools are trending in affluent neighborhoods; parents in Kansas City launched a program called Stand Together And Rethink Technology (START); and another group of parents in Missouri have joined forces to figure out how to reduce their children’s screen time.

As educational technology continues to proliferate, and as today’s careers demand tech-savvy job candidates who already know how to use devices, the argument over the right amount of screen time is getting louder. To gain some consensus on the issue, EdSurge reached out to a handful of education and industry experts for their opinions.

Here’s what they shared with us.

How can schools, teachers, and parents find the right “balance” for today’s digital natives?

Emily Weinstein, Project Zero and postdoctoral fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Education: It’s easy to just talk about screen time as if it’s an amorphous sort of general thing, but I think often when we focus on that we lose sight of how important it is to attend to what kids are actually doing when they're using those screens.  Put simply, the content itself matters more than the time spent looking at the screen.

Read the full article about screen time by Bridget McCrea at EdSurge