Every spring, school leaders and educators work hard to send students off with summer reading lists, math packets, and enrichment recommendations to combat the academic summer slide. But there’s a parallel phenomenon happening that we rarely name: the summer tech slide.
Summer is the longest stretch of unstructured time many students will experience all year. There is no bell schedule, no classroom restrictions, and no teacher noticing when a student’s attention has drifted into something harmful.
Instead, many students are home with their devices, an algorithm, and three months of unsupervised screen time to build habits that will follow them back into the classroom at the start of the new school year.
That makes the last few weeks of school one of the most underutilized moments in teaching the modern life skills that instill healthy tech habits, and educators have a huge opportunity to lay a positive foundation before the final bell.
A found a summer screen time surge, with 68% of children using technology more during summer break. The social dynamics that play out on their phonesincluding group chats, videos constantly served by algorithms, and comment sections with no filterbecome their primary social environment.
Without the structure of school routines, some students drift toward patterns that can be hard to break once the school year resumes, such as late-night scrolling, algorithm rabbit holes, and social media comparison.
Digital wellness before they walk out the door
The instinct in many districts is to treat summer as a time to step back from device conversations. But the reality is that district and school leaders have a meaningful opportunity to equip students with three things before they walk out the school doors for summer break, including:
- A framework for intentional use. Encourage staff to ask students to identify one way they want technology to add to their summer, whether by learning something new, staying connected with people they care about, or creating something, and to identify one way they want to ensure tech doesn’t subtract from their summer. Few students (or adults, for that matter) take the time to intentionally think about their tech use and how they want it to impact their lives.
- The habit of a feed audit. Most students have never zoomed out to look at who they follow, what their algorithm shows them, or what their privacy settings actually allow. Encourage staff to have students take ten minutes before the last bell to review who theyre following, update their privacy settings, and ask themselves: Does my feed reflect who I want to be?
- A reminder that students have more control than they think. Social media algorithms are designed to capture and hold attention, but students don’t have to be passive viewers. District leaders can direct teachers and counselors to walk students through the built-in tools already on their devices that can help them strike a healthier balance:
- turning on Focus Mode or Do Not Disturb to silence notifications when they need to be productive
- muting group chats to minimize the constant pings or feelings of FOMO
- setting in-app time limits that signal when it’s time to step away.
These aren’t restrictions imposed from the outside. They’re tools students can choose to give themselves agency, and that distinction matters.
What students are already telling us
When we work with students on these issuesand treat them as partners rather than talking down to themthe response is striking. Students are far more aware of how technology affects them than adults often assume.
In fact, The Social Institute about what skills they could improve when it comes to navigating social media and technology, and the top response among high schoolers was “finding a better balance between screen time and other priorities.” They already know what they need; our job as educators and role models is to give them the tools to get there.
Stopping the summer tech slide
District and school leaders looking for a concrete way to close the school year with digital intention can encourage staff to build one or all of these into their final days:
- A brief class huddle: What’s one thing you want technology to do for you this summer, and one thing you don’t want it to do?
- A five-minute feed audit: follow someone new who inspires you, unfollow one account that doesn’t; check one privacy setting you’ve never looked at
- A commitment to striking a balance by taking up one offline activitysuch as reading, learning a new hobby, or improving at a sport
None of these requires a new curriculum, hours of planning, or extra budget. They require only the conviction that healthy tech habits are part of our responsibilities as educators, not just during the school year but all year.
