FCC Rethinks School Internet Subsidies Over Screen Time Concerns

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reviewing its internet subsidy program for schools amid concerns that excessive screen time ⁠for children is linked to poor educational outcomes.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a June 3 statement that the ​commission is beginning a comprehensive review of the $3 billion E-Rate program.

“Over the last several years—and especially during COVID—many schools dramatically increased screen time for kids, with many students now swiping for hours every day,” he said.

“Research has now been pouring in that America’s experiment with heightened screen time in schools may be related to the negative educational outcomes we are now seeing in classrooms across the country—from declining academic performance to diminished reading comprehension skills.”

Carr said that although parents can supervise screen use and monitor internet access at home, parental controls do not extend in the same way to their children’s classrooms and libraries.

Under the FCC’s E-Rate program, eligible schools, libraries, and consortia may apply for discounted eligible telecommunications, internet access, and internal connection services.

The FCC has been subsidizing connectivity to and within schools for almost 30 years, Carr said.

He said that he has rolled back “unlawful COVID-era expansions” such as E-Rate funding for off-campus Wi-Fi hotspots and school bus Wi-Fi, as those programs exceeded the FCC’s “congressional authority and wasted federal funds.”

An initial vote on the proposal will take place on June 25.

In May, ‌the Department of Health and Human Services released the first-ever surgeon general’s warning on the harms of screen use ​and called on parents to cut excessive screen time for children.

In the warning, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that although some screen use can have some benefits, the evidence of a range of risks to children’s overall mental and physical health is mounting.

“These negative outcomes are related to harmful use, including use by children with vulnerable medical conditions, along with the ubiquity of devices and features deliberately built into many tech platforms to promote ‘engagement,’ a positive sounding word that, for too many young people, is a path to addiction-like behavior,” he said.

The FCC review also comes against the backdrop of weak national reading scores.

Official federal test results show that American children’s reading has not recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

According to January 2025 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), U.S. students continued to lose ground in reading, extending a slide that began before the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Average reading scores in 2024 fell by 2 points for both fourth- and eighth-grade students from those in 2022.

“This steepens the 3-point decline seen in both grades between 2022 from 2019,” the National Assessment Governing Board said.

In 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted a special administration of the NAEP long-term trend reading and mathematics assessments for 9-year-old students to examine student achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It found that average scores for 9-year-olds declined by 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics from those in 2020.

It said it was the “largest average score decline in reading since 1990,” and the mathematics fall was the “first ever score decline.”

Teachers unions came under scrutiny for their role in keeping schools closed during COVID-19.

According to a 2022 Staff Report Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the American Federation for Teachers asked former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to install a “trigger” in the guidance that would cause schools to close automatically if COVID-19 positivity rates reached a certain threshold.

It said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then obliged, and thousands of schools across the country remained closed throughout the 2020–2021 school year.

The National Center for Education Statistics, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education, reported that 77 percent of public schools moved some or all classes to online distance-learning formats in early 2020.

By the beginning of the 2021–2022 school year, 96 percent of public schools were providing digital devices to students.