Facilitating Digital Wellness in K–12 Schools

Understanding Digital Wellness: Beyond Screen Time Management

To ensure students can make healthy use of technology, educators must look beyond limiting screen time.

“Digital wellness is about helping students develop a balanced and responsible relationship with technology,” says Amy Bennett, chief of staff at Lightspeed Systems.

Digital wellness aims to help young people “understand the digital world in a way that doesn’t just conform to their whims and feed them more of the same thoughts that they have over and over again,” says Schoharie Central School District Superintendent Dave Blanchard. Instead of being in an echo chamber, “you’re actually learning more about the world and building your horizons.”

“People often associate digital wellness with screen time use, but it goes beyond that,” says Jamie Nunez, senior manager of outreach and training at Common Sense Media. “It’s about the intentional relationships you have with others in the space. It’s focusing and thinking critically about how you’re using technology.”

Connecting Digital Wellness to Social-Emotional Learning

A focus on digital wellness aligns with schools’ efforts to promote social-emotional learning.

“Social-emotional learning helps students recognize and manage their emotions, build empathy, and make sense of all of those feelings,” Bennett says. “Digital wellness extends those SEL concepts into students’ online lives, where they’re forming identities and relationships and habits in a digital, virtual world.”

It makes sense that the two would relate, since students’ use of technology “is directly tied to their emotions and their well-being,” Nunez says.

“Social-emotional learning gives kids the skills necessary to navigate it. Digital wellness becomes a lot stronger when those skills are built intentionally, when they’re using and engaging with technology in a mindful way.”

Setting Classroom Guidelines That Foster Healthy Tech Habits

Teachers can take steps in the classroom to foster students’ digital wellness. That starts with balancing screen time and human interactions.

“If the digital tools are used to convey a lesson, then kids have to work together: project-based discussions and working through a problem,” Blanchard says. “Teachers can say, ‘Here’s the formal lesson, but now let’s talk about it among yourselves.’”

Educators can use class time to foster reflection.

“Encourage students to look at and think about their technology use and reflect on the patterns, what they mean and where they find themselves distracted,” Bennett says. “Awareness is a first step toward understanding where maybe you need to pay more attention or set some additional guardrails on yourself.”

Awareness and reflection escalate in importance as students start to engage with sophisticated AI-driven technologies. Teachers can help them understand “how to think critically about the tools that they’re using and the information that they’re getting, discerning fact from fiction — all of these elements that might impact their overall well-being,” Nunez says.

Leveraging Technology To Support Digital Wellness

Classroom management software, content filtering solutions and safety monitoring products can support digital wellness. Instead of simply restricting them, Bennett encourages schools to use these tools to empower young learners.

“Classroom management tools can very easily restrict students down to one website and turning it off if they’re getting distracted,” she says. “But you need to have the conversations. You need to loosen up the guardrails and keep an eye on things, so that students start to develop awareness and healthy habits for themselves. The end goal is to have students who can walk out into a world without all of that and be able to manage it for themselves.”

With an eye toward empowerment, Blanchard’s district has a “freshman experience” for kids entering high school, and it includes a discussion of responsible device use.

“We’re trying to really get them to understand how the digital world affects them, what the outcomes are — and if they’re not careful, how easily they can get sucked in,” he says.

SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to get the latest EdTech content delivered to your inbox weekly.

Building a Schoolwide Approach: Policy, Training and Family Engagement

Digital wellness must be more than a classroom exercise.

“This is not a single lesson,” Bennett says. “It is not a one-class initiative. It’s about building a culture of healthy habits and balance.”

To that end, “you need schoolwide policies so students know what to expect. You need training that helps classroom teachers to know what they should be doing to help drive those healthy habits,” she says. “And then, family engagement helps you build trust and transparency, and also helps parents understand their role.”

Blanchard brings this to life in his district.

“We have family engagement nights several times a year with different themes, such as social-emotional learning and suicide awareness,” he says. Some of these sessions focus on digital wellness. “We want parents to become more aware of digital media and how kids are learning on their devices, whether it’s their Chromebook, their phone or an iPad.”

Common Sense Media encourages this approach.

“We’re trying to move away from the idea of teaching these as one-off skills, one time a year,” Nunez says.

“We can’t just tell kids what to do or not do on tech. We need to teach them these skills so that there’s a wholeness to it, so they understand the impact technology has on them,” he says.

That requires a schoolwide approach.

“You can’t address it by only focusing on training or even isolated family talks or workshops,” he says. “You really need to ensure that it’s cohesive and one is supporting another.”