Kindergarten teacher Tracey Robinson has witnessed a shift in her classroom over the three decades she has taught at Akron Public Schools’ Schumacher Community Learning Center.
Before technology entered classrooms, she said learning was more hands-on. Young kids went to the park after school, practiced a sport or played with their dolls.
These days, kids tell her they are going to play a video game or scroll on their phones when they get home from school.
Robinson said the shift to more screen time has correlated with a reduction in some of her students’ attention spans. To adapt, she has begun teaching shorter lessons, giving her students more breaks throughout the day and coming up with new ways to keep them focused.
First of a three-part series.
“It’s disappointing because our brain is a muscle, and it needs to work, and it needs to be stimulated to have that stamina to be able to sit and listen and access learning,” said Robinson, who was Akron Public Schools’ 2025 district teacher of the year.
Back-to-school season is in full swing across Greater Akron, but it often takes students a while to reacclimate to the classroom after a long summer break that may have included lots of time playing video games and watching television.
According to Common Sense Media’s 2025 census, 5- to 8-year-olds average around 3.5 hours on screens every day. The expected attention span for kids ages 6 and 7 is about 18 minutes at a time. But studies show that spending excessive time on technology may affect young children’s attention spans, reducing their ability to focus while their brains are still developing.
To determine when screen time becomes excessive, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends “considering the quality of interactions with digital media and not just the quantity.”
An advisory by the U.S. surgeon general’s office warned that children may be spending more time on screens than attending school or sleeping. It recommends that children ages 6 to 18 should only have up to two hours of screen time daily.
Kids with excessive screen time may have a harder time paying attention in school, learning and mastering what they need to move on to the next grade level, said Roxanne Crook, a first grade teacher at Akron’s Crouse CLC.
She works to tie technology into what she’s doing in the classroom and use it to her advantage.
“It’s going to get bigger than this,” she said. “We need to embrace technology because it’s not going anywhere. We just have to learn how to work with it.”
How have classrooms changed before and after technology?
Robinson said she didn’t have to try as hard to keep her students’ attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Early on, her days weren’t as structured as they are now — there was more free play time. Today, students’ days are “jam-packed,” she said.
“They adapt to it, and they seem to enjoy it,” Robinson said.
When she first started teaching, Robinson had a station of about five desktop computers in the classroom, and the kindergartners would use them for about 10 minutes per day. Now, every student has their own Chromebook to use for online reading and math programs.
At first, the kids enjoy the technology, but they become more wary of it as the year goes on and the lessons it’s used for become more challenging, Robinson said.
She said she keeps a more watchful eye on students she knows play a lot of video games. She breaks lessons up for them to help build their attention spans throughout the year.
Robinson said not all children are having a hard time paying attention, and those who do may have other reasons for losing focus. Some children have difficult schedules at home or don’t get enough rest, which could be why they are not very attentive.
“Each child is [an] individual, and you have to know each of them and know their background and know a little bit about their environment,” she said.
How do kids feel about technology?
Lisa Heath, who has been a school counselor since 2005 at Akron’s Harris-Jackson Elementary CLC, conducted a survey during the 2025-2026 school year with about 20 kids she had in a classroom, asking them what would happen if they weren’t allowed to use their tech for a week.
They answered on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 indicating they would be fine and 10 meaning they wouldn’t be able to function.
Four kids said they didn’t have a phone or tablet they used consistently. Four responded with 4 or lower, while a dozen were above 5. Nobody said 10.
Kylee Collins, who is 6, said her favorite part of the school day, other than reading, is going on the computer. She enjoys playing PBS Kids games and Kahoot.
Technology makes her happy, she said.
But that’s not the case with all first graders in Crook’s classroom. Three of her classmates during the 2025-2026 school year said they would rather do their homework on a piece of paper than on a computer.
“It’s easier,” Aniya Smith said. “The Chromebooks have way more buttons.”
With the advent of Chromebooks and online homework, there is a certain element of screen time that is unavoidable, said Dr. Michael Redovian, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with Akron Children’s hospital.
He said kids enjoy using technology because it lights up their dopamine and norepinephrine tracks, which regulate motivation, focus and energy.
When scrolling through an app like TikTok, a user gets dopamine hit after dopamine hit. When they exit the app, the brain goes back to its normal chemical balance, which feels boring.
Redovian compared the feeling to going from Cedar Point to doing taxes.
“There’s definitely a high reliance on technology,” Heath said. “I can see that daily.”
Technology can sometimes help keep kids attentive
Robinson said her kindergarten students prefer hands-on learning in small groups with her over computer time. The multi-sensory approach keeps them engaged.
But in some ways, Crook, the first-grade teacher, said technology in the classroom actually helps the kids pay attention better.
During the 2025-2026 school year, she taught her first graders a writing unit on nonfiction. Every student had an animal they studied for five weeks.
Crook taught the students how to use Google to search for pictures of their animals.
“I’ve never seen them so excited to write, because they were using the computer,” she said. “It was meaningful. That was a way to keep their attention.”
Internal motivation and close relationships are key between teachers and students
One of the ways Crook helps students focus is to consistently remind them of their purpose and why they’re at school, which is to get to second grade. She believes this motivation helps them stay on task, no matter their attention span.
“[Students are] always working towards something,” Crook said. “I think that keeps them engaged and their attention.”
She makes sure to tell them how much they’ve grown to encourage them.
“Once they know that they’re doing good, and they’re getting smarter, they want to keep trying hard,” Crook said.
This also helps build a relationship between her and her students, which she said is essential.
“Teaching is building relationships,” she said. “You have to have the relationship first with the child for them to buy in and want to follow your routine and be engaged in your classroom.”
She does her best to understand their world and what they care about as first graders, whether that is the latest TikTok trend or what they’re watching on YouTube.
“If you have their attention, you have the relationship with them, they’ll do anything for you,” she said.
Lauren Cohen was a community reporting intern for the Akron Beacon Journal and Signal Akron. The position was funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation, which is a financial sponsor of Signal Akron.
