Hachette Learning Weighs In
Over the last few decades, many schools have introduced technology into the classroom demonstrating how it can help improve student engagement, attainment and save teachers’ time. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the need for technology, forcing schools worldwide to pivot to remote learning.
The rise in technology in classrooms has also seen a rise in the effects on young people including concentration difficulties, disrupted sleep, and negative impacts on wellbeing. Whilst it is important for students to be digital-forward, it is equally important that they are adequately protected. If we continue to integrate technology into the classroom, we need to consider the impact on the health and wellbeing of staff and students. What was once a supplement to teaching has become, for many schools, the primary medium of it.
What Parents Are Really Worried About
It’s no surprise that parental concern around screen usage is a pivotal issue in schools. When Hachette Learning visited schools across Southeast Asia and the Middle East in October 2025, more than half of schools expressed that parents are worried about their children using digital devices at home.
- In Bangkok, one school expressed that digital use was “fairly taboo” at home.
- In Dubai, secondary teachers shared that parents didn’t want their children “on devices all the time”.
- In Oman, the preference for print was particularly strong – parents described choosing to “return to pen and paper”.
- And across multiple regions, the concern was especially pronounced for younger children, with several schools noting they limit or delay device use until age eight or nine.
Parents’ reluctance pointed to four clear concerns,
- Distraction – when using a device, what stops a child from opening another app or going into something non-learning related?
- Screen fatigue – children are already on screens for entertainment. Academic use on top feels like too much.
- Loss of oversight – with a workbook, parents see exactly what their child is doing.
- Equity and access – not every child has a device or stable internet. Not every parent can navigate a platform.
Not All Screen Time Is Created Equal
On a school visit in England in early 2026, one secondary geography teacher reflected on what good digital practice requires:
“The massive benefits come from using the platform in the right way at the right time. Platforms that just serve up content first only test short-term memory. The value is in what happens after, the retrieval, the reflection, the spaced practice.”
A child spending 20 minutes working through curriculum-aligned questions, checking their understanding, and reflecting on where they went wrong is having a different experience from one who is passively consuming content or drilling rote answers without reflection.
Rather than just screen time, it can be thought of in three ways,
| Passive Screen Time | Observation onlyLow-level engagementStaring at screens or boards |
| Active Screen Time | Hands-on interactionPhysical engagementNavigating interfaces, solving tasks |
| Metacognitive Screen Time | Reflecting on learningHigher-order thinkingEvaluates strategy and reasoning |
Whilst the general image of screen time is passive consumption with apps deliberately designed to maximise engagement and keep the user scrolling, good digital learning encourages metacognitive screen time.
Metacognition, the ability to think about one’s own thinking – helps children become independent learners and is associated with meaningful improvements in academic performance.
“Good digital learning encourages metacognitive screen time.”
When a student finishes a question and is asked not just for the answer but to rank how confident they were or how difficult they found the question, the child begins to pay attention to their own understanding. This is when the secure knowledge, connected understanding and long-term retention start to be formed.
Making Digital Learning More Personal
Adaptive Learn from Hachette Learning is an adaptive digital resource powered by metacognition that offers targeted learning for the Cambridge Primary and Cambridge Lower Secondary curriculum. Adaptive Learn helps every learner realise their potential by maximising learning through personalised learning pathways, exam practice and individual self-reflection.
It’s crucial that children develop healthy habits around technology.
Engaging purposefully and being guided and monitored is crucial. Laura Knight, author of Educating the child: literacy and wellbeing said,
“We must teach young people to live well with technology, not apart from it, cultivating the capacities of conscience, critical judgement and courage: qualities that enable young people to live ethically, wisely and resiliently in a world where online and offline realities are blended.”
Striking a balance between online and offline realities shapes how products are built at Hachette Learning, with digital tools designed to sit alongside print resources, not replace them.
Hachette Learning also believes that the appropriate amount of screen time should be different across age groups, and both the quality and quantity of screen time matter. To harness it effectively, a balance should be struck – something that connects the richness of a textbook and workbook with the personalisation, feedback and insight of a digital, adaptive resource.
