Ed tech critics are often right, but they don’t understand online learning

Originally published by DLAC on 12 March 2026

By John Watson

Critics of education technology are often correct, and those of us in online learning should say that plainly.

 Critics are right that technology added to conventional classrooms has usually delivered less than promised. That has been true across decades and across different waves of technology: educational television, computers, the internet, tablets, gamification, virtual reality, and now, so far, AI. The basic pattern holds. Schools buy tools, implementation is uneven, and measurable academic gains are often small or hard to find at all.

 Critics are also right to worry about what digital media is doing to young people.

 I’m not a cognitive scientist, and don’t claim any expertise on adolescent attention. But the broader concern is hard to dismiss. Short-form video, constant alerts, algorithmic feeds, and the general splintering of attention all seem to be making sustained reading and persistent thought harder. That matters because learning hard things depends on exactly those capacities. If students have more trouble concentrating, reading deeply, or staying with hard topics long enough to work through them, school gets harder in very basic ways.

 Critics are also right that online learning was oversold fifteen or twenty years ago. Some of the predictions from that era did not pan out. There was a period when people talked as if large parts of K-12 schooling were about to move online in short order. That did not happen. The neighborhood school did not gradually turn into a hybrid school (in almost all cases; there are exceptions). Most schools did not become meaningfully different just because students had devices and internet access.

 But that is also where some of the criticism starts to slide into a category mistake.

 “Ed tech” as commonly understood has become a giant bucket that can include too many technology implementations to be meaningful: software in a traditional classroom, district laptop initiatives, AI tools, and also full-time online schools and supplemental online courses are often included. The arguments seem simple, but in fact they are sloppy and inaccurate.

 A math app used for twenty minutes in a district classroom has little in common with an online course. A district buying more licenses for digital content is completely different from a virtual program with its own staffing, schedule, expectations, student supports, and instructional routines. Even when an online school sits inside a district, it often functions like a side venture that developed its own practices and culture rather than a slightly modified version of the main system.

That difference matters, because much of the strongest criticism is really criticism of technology layered onto legacy schools. That criticism is fair. If the school day stays the same, the staffing model stays the same, the curriculum stays the same, the accountability system stays the same, and then a district adds devices and software, there is no reason to assume learning will improve much. Sometimes it does not improve at all. Sometimes it gets worse because the tools add distraction, fragmentation, and low-value activity while consuming time and money.

Online and hybrid learning grew in a different way. They did not grow because mainstream schools steadily transformed themselves. In most cases, growth came from the creation of new schools, new programs, and new course providers that families and students could opt into over time. That growth fell short of some early predictions, but it created real alternatives for students whose needs were not being met in conventional settings and collectively these schools and courses are now serving millions of students.

That includes students with health issues, schedule conflicts, geographic barriers, advanced course needs, credit recovery needs, safety concerns, family responsibilities, or simply a strong preference for a different environment. None of that proves every online school is good. Some are weak. Some are excellent. Most fall somewhere in between, as schools generally do. The point is that online schools deserve to be judged as schools and programs, with all the variation that implies.

The “screen time” discussion creates another layer of confusion. People often talk about screen time as if it were one experience, which is lazy. Watching endless short-form videos is screen time. Doomscrolling social media is screen time. Reading a long, detailed article is screen time.

Writing an essay is screen time. Joining a live seminar is screen time. Taking a course, getting feedback from a teacher, revising a paper, analyzing data, reading a novel on a tablet, and posting videos for strangers are all screen-based activities. Pretending they belong in one conceptual pile does not help much. The device is part of the story, but the content, structure, and incentives matter more.

That should be obvious, but it is apparently not obvious enough in policy debates. Some policymakers are responding to legitimate concerns about distraction and youth mental health by moving toward broad limits on school technology use. It’s clear how this happens. A real problem gets identified. The public gets uneasy. The easiest response is to go after the visible object in students’ hands. Once that happens, the conversation quickly loses precision. Laws written to push back on low-value digital instruction or addictive design can easily sweep up online and hybrid schools that serve students well.

That is where online learning advocates need to be much more direct than we have sometimes been. The answer isn’t to deny the failures of ed tech; there have been plenty. The answer is not to act as if every digital product deserves defending because it happens to involve a screen. And the answer is definitely not to return to the old language of transformation and disruption, which helped create some of this skepticism in the first place.

The better approach starts with conceding the obvious. A lot of ed tech has been oversold. Some of it has been weak, distracting, and poorly supported by evidence. Some digital environments are clearly harmful for kids.

But those realities usually don’t apply to online and hybrid schools, which should be evaluated the way we evaluate other schools. Who are they serving? What is the instructional model?

What support do students receive? What outcomes do they produce? Which students thrive there, and which students do not?

Those questions require more work than simply asking how many hours students spend on screens. They are also much closer to the real issues, which aren’t whether schools and students are using technology, but instead whether schools and students are using technology to deliver new options and positive outcomes.