Parents disturbed by kids out-of-control screentime at school, spent surfing web and playing poker-like game: Electonric fentanyl

Screen time at school is tech-ing a toll on tots. Rather than reading, writing and arithmetic, students as young as preschoolers are learning the fundamentals of Chromebooks, iPads and apps in 2026. It’s a vexing, virtual reality much to the chagrin of peeved parents, nationwide, who are now admonishing the academic powers that be for plying their children with “electronic fentanyl” while at their desks.“Every pre-K that I’ve been to has shown me that they have some sort of device in the classroom,” Nadia, a mom of a toddler prepping to start school this fall, groaned in a viral vid.“Why is this a thing? I don’t like that.”“Even [at] the super prestigious schools,” she continued.

“I don’t want my kid to be learning on this.I don’t want to be paying thousands of dollars for him to just be staring at a device, because he doesn’t do that at home — he doesn’t have a device.” “What the heck? I don’t like this.”Nadia’s sentiments are echoed by hundreds of outraged mothers and fathers, from New York City to Los Angeles, concerned that their kids are being exposed to excessive screen time on school-issued technologies. Amid the rise of artificial intelligence — an advent that encourages humans, of all ages, to rely on bots over their brains — parents, teachers and students have ferociously decried the overuse of devices in classrooms, arguing the gadgets hinder learning and normalize cheating. Criticisms cast in and around the Big Apple, unfortunately, have had little effect on the Department of Education, which has invested over $1 billion in tech firms.

In fact, NYC’s Chromebook initiative, offering a device to almost every student across the boroughs, is one of the DOE’s largest technology investments.But some fear the gift has fast become a curse. Throughout the US, children from kindergarten to grade 12 average just 48 minutes of in-school screen-time per day, according to a 2026 EdTech App report b...