Healthy Screen Use in Schools: How Families and Schools Can Work Together

Abstract

Digital literacy and the effective use of digital technologies such as screens, are fundamental educational skills, essential not only for students’ learning but also for their future careers. From a parent’s perspective, managing children’s screen use can be overwhelming. The volume of available information makes decisions about digital technology use confusing. There are separate guidelines for screen use at home and at school that target elements such as duration, safety, and type of content, however, this advice does not typically address how children use this technology across both settings. This narrative overview outlines the key benefits and challenges of screen use in children’s lives and presents practical recommendations to support a collaboration between home and school to ensure screen use supports children’s development.

Introduction

Digital technologies have created substantial opportunities for schools, and an associated shift in the expectations about the way students learn, and teachers teach. There are numerous potential benefits of the digitisation of educational practices, including enhanced student interest and engagement, tailored individualised learning and increased opportunities for collaboration between home and school (Liang et al., 2025; OECD, 2025). A positive home-school partnership provides an important foundation for children’s development and learning outcomes (e.g. Jeynes, 2024).

Increasingly, digital literacy and the effective use of digital technologies are seen as fundamental components of education. Edtech use in schools has become ubiquitous (Freires & Lopes, 2024) yet, the evidence for students’ positive academic outcomes and associated levels of digital literacy is lagging (Acquah & Katz, 2020; Burden et al., 2019; Hainey et al., 2016; Otchie & Pedaste, 2020). Indeed, many educators believe that screens represent a distraction in the classroom (Gonski Institute for Education, 2020; OECD, 2025).

The Challenges of Digital Technologies at the Home School Interface

While the promise of digital technologies for learning has some support, children and young people often use screens for purposes other than learning both in and outside of the classroom. Over 80% of Australian parents report that their child is negatively distracted by digital technologies (Graham & Sahlberg, 2021; Howie et al., 2020) and children’s screen use is the number one concern of Australian parents (RCH National Child Health Poll, 2021). Given both parents’ and teachers’ concern about screen use, there is a pressing need for proactive communication between a child’s home and their school to ensure best use of technologies across both contexts to support children’s learning.

While the challenges of screen use both at home and school have been well documented, navigating the intersection between home and school has been less well explored. For instance, differences in the perceived functions of technology across settings can lead to variations in how home and school regulate children’s screen use (Edwards et al., 2017), that is, technology use for entertainment at home and for learning at school (Henderson, 2011). Parents note that there can be a lack of clarity in guidance and expectations regarding how they should support their children’s digital learning (Osorio-Saez et al., 2021), what schools’ expectations about technology use at home are, and the extent to which parents are expected to engage with these technologies.

Inequities can also arise when families lack resources to enable their children to access digital technologies for schoolwork (Hollingworth et al., 2011) or when parents lack experience, knowledge, or skills to guide their children’s use of technology, and thus their screen use (Koch et al., 2024; Wang & Xing, 2018). The proliferation of platforms and modes of communication can also create uncertainties around how and where to share and access information (Laho, 2019). Parents and teachers each have an influential role in cultivating healthy screen practices (Martin et al., 2021), thus, it is critical to ensure that they have a shared language and a shared set of strategies to build their collective capacity for promoting children’s healthy screen use (Haidt, 2024).

Guidelines for Enhancing Home-School Partnerships in Healthy Screen Use

While separate guidelines for children’s screen use at home (e.g. Australian 24-hr movement guidelines which included sedentary screen time recommendations) and school (e.g. purposeful digital teaching that enhances collaboration, creativity, and personalised learning that is balanced with traditional) exist, they typically do not account for the use of screens across both contexts, highlighting the importance of a collaborative home-school partnership to support children’s development (Aladé & Donohue, 2023). Given that technology use is both important and unavoidable, it is essential to approach it from a self-regulatory perspective. This means helping children, parents, and schools manage screen use in ways that are purposeful, balanced, and informed; encouraging limits, autonomy, skill development, and critical thinking (Gonski Institute for Education, 2020; Liang et al., 2025). A self-regulatory approach emphasises building the capacities of families, schools, and communities to ensure that the benefits of digital technologies through screen use are maximised and the risks minimised. Given the long-lasting impact of excessive early screen use on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development, the current narrative overview will focus on primary school contexts (Muppalla et al., 2023).

What Parents Can Do at Home

As children typically begin using technology well before starting school, it is crucial for parents to have the necessary digital literacy and self-efficacy to equip their children with knowledge and skills to develop healthy screen use practices (Hollandsworth et al., 2011). Evidence-based parenting approaches to manage screen use are essential, and growing evidence suggests that family-based interventions are effective (e.g. Mitchell et al., 2025; Rajagopal et al., 2025). Multiple parenting factors such as modelling, screen-free family times and boundary setting shape children’s technology use prior to the transition to formal schooling (Morawska et al., 2023; Pyne et al., 2025). Importantly, parents also believe that schools share the responsibility for teaching children the skills and practices they need to interact productively with technology (Gonski Institute for Education, 2020; Graham & Sahlberg, 2021), thus facilitating opportunities for parents and schools to work together to develop a shared language and common goals related to children’s screen use is critical.

What Schools Can Do to Build Home-School Partnerships

To help children benefit from screen use, it is important for schools to strengthen the home school partnership by inviting parents to engage with their children’s digital learning (Urías-Martínez et al., 2025). Parents often express a strong desire for their own upskilling and given that parents are more likely to engage with their children’s technology-related learning when they feel capable and have the capacity to do so, schools could consider harnessing this expressed demand as the basis of a collaborative relationship (Bolenbaugh et al., 2020; Gagliardi & O’Brien, 2025). The Helping Children Develop Healthy Screentime Habits Seminar (Turner et al., 2025) is one such resource that aims to cultivate parents’ sense of self-efficacy to support their children’s screen use by providing them with strategies such as setting rules, providing active guidance, as well as modelling self-regulatory skills (Gruchel et al., 2022). As effective vehicles for delivering evidence-based parenting support, schools could share with parents available, online resources that provide digital education that parents can access in their own time, as a basis to foster shared understanding (Tsuei & Hsu, 2019; Urías-Martínez et al., 2025).

Furthermore, to create shared goals and understanding across home and school, it is important to have clear shared expectations and ongoing communication about the role of digital technologies in school and at home (Osorio-Saez et al., 2021). This should include information about how screens are used to support learning at school and what specific pedagogical approaches are used to enhance the integration of technology use into the learning environment. Having consistency regarding screen use across schools and home is likely to be beneficial in reinforcing students’ digital knowledge and habits. In addition to setting expectations, schools could consider linking parents to available resources to ensure that children and families can access the required learning resources (Osorio-Saez et al., 2021).

What Parents and Schools Can Do Together

To build strong home school partnerships that support healthy screen use, co-developed school community wide guidelines are needed. Such guidelines are likely to be unique to each school community, reflecting their specific needs, preferences, and opportunities, and revisited over time to ensure their relevance in response to evolving technologies and community needs. To co-develop such guidelines, schools need to create a welcoming, equal, and respectful environment; facilitate norms where parent involvement is expected; provide opportunities for both school staff and families to develop technological literacy and confidence in supporting healthy child screen use; and develop the skills and self-efficacy of both parents and teachers to work together. Existing evidence-based parenting interventions both broad (e.g. Triple P Online; Prinz et al., 2022) as well as ones specifically focussed on supporting healthy screen use habits (e.g. Healthy Habits Triple P; Mitchell et al., 2025) can be used as shared guidelines at home and school. Decades of evidence support the benefits of a healthy home-school partnership for all stakeholders, however, the practical skills required to build such a relationship are currently lacking. Interventions such as Family-School Connect (Hodges et al., 2025) aim to build the capacity of parents and school staff to employ shared expectations and strategies for respectful and collaborative communication to foster a healthy home-school partnership to support children’s learning and development, which may also facilitate the co-regulation of children’s screen use.

Research and Practice Future Directions

For psychologists and counsellors in primary schools, this overview highlights the importance of practical guidelines and accessible resources to facilitate their work with parents in supporting children’s healthy screen use across home and school. Despite the rapid evolution and dissemination of digital learning technologies, this evidence base is still evolving (Burden et al., 2019). There is an ongoing need to ensure there is a sound pedagogical approach and an evidence-base to the use of screens for digital learning. Without this solid foundation, teachers, parents, and students may question the value of specific approaches and undermine the integration of effective methods. Similarly, while this evidence is continually evolving, we need a better understanding of what kind of screen use and under what circumstances this use is beneficial or harmful. Without this knowledge base, existing guidelines, which are often seen as unrealistic and confusing to parents (Gonski Institute for Education, 2020), are unlikely to be helpful in guiding parents to support their child’s healthy screen use. Receiving black-and-white and often mixed messages about screen use (e.g. “screen use is harmful” and “digital knowledge is key to future success”) from both schools and the media, can undermine parent confidence in supporting their child. Effective, up-to-date, evidence-based interventions to support parents are crucial to ensure that parents have the necessary skills and confidence. Likewise, teachers may also feel that they lack the necessary skills and training to support their students effectively, pointing to the need to develop evidence-based teacher training programs to bridge this gap. Finally, interventions to support the home-school partnership broadly, as well as in the context of screen use, are necessary to ensure that there is a consistent, evidence-based and evolving approach to support young people with the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly developing digital environment.