Avery Schromm did not want to be surveilled.
Her charter school in California implemented an updated laptop policy in January that required students to do schoolwork using school-issued Chromebooks, which had monitoring software installed, exclusively inside and outside the classroom. “Administrators reserve the right to examine, use and disclose any data found on the school’s networks in order to further the health, safety, discipline or security of any student or other person, or to protect property,” the new policy stated. In other words: You should have no expectation of privacy.
Schromm, who is 17 and a senior, told me that what bothered her the most was how abruptly the new policy was rolled out, with too little regard for student and parent input. So she decided to take action. The night the policy was introduced, Schromm sent the entire student body an email that included a survey asking her peers for feedback.
About a third of her classmates answered, and 90 percent of those respondents agreed with the statement “Being required to use a device that is explicitly ‘not private’ makes me uncomfortable.” A majority of the students who took the survey also worried about being monitored outside of instructional time and about how their data might be stored.
Schromm’s proud mother, Carly Perlman, was one of the people who reached out to me after I wrote in a previous newsletter that I wanted to hear from people who know Luddite teens and students pushing back against tech use in their schools. I wanted to talk to the kids themselves because we already know that a lot of parents, teachers and administrators are waking up to the negative effects of a tech-addled childhood. But if we want the culture as a whole to become more skeptical of tech use in school and out, high schoolers need to be on board, too. They are about to be adults, using their free will to make decisions about tech use outside their parents’ purview and the all-seeing eye of GoGuardian.
Broadly, teenagers’ feelings about technology are mixed. Depending on the survey, between 60 and 75 percent of teens support cellphone restrictions in their schools. Nearly half say that social media has a mostly negative effect on people their age, though they do think it can be used positively, especially for socializing with friends. On artificial intelligence, teenagers are somewhat more positive than negative about what they expect will be the societal impact of A.I. over the next 20 years, though they also feel a lot of uncertainty.
Speaking to Schromm and several other teens who object to certain kinds of tech use in their lives, I think the most appealing anti-tech messages to their Gen Z and Alpha peers will be about privacy and fighting the establishment, whether the establishment is their school administrators, tech companies or a society that devalues their own creative contributions and humanity. Some of these teens find that being extremely online is a depressing way to live, and they want a future that involves more embodied activity (music, animal care and crafting all came up as nonscreen alternatives) and real-life connection. But this desire has to come from them, not as a lecture from the adults around them.
The high school students I spoke to were also aware of the changes that A.I. is bringing to not just how they learn but also how they are taught. I spoke to three students at a private school, also in California, who are dismayed about faculty use of artificial intelligence. Amelie, 16 (Amelie’s parents requested that I use only her first name); Emma Homrig, 17; and Jay Liu, 18, who are juniors and seniors, told me that their school prohibits students from using artificial intelligence, but it appears to have no such prohibition on faculty members. There is no smartphone use on school grounds, and limited laptop use.
These three said they chose their school specifically for its focus on nature and community — its website notes the school’s commitment to environmental stewardship — and so they all felt it was hypocritical to hear that their teachers were using A.I. for various tasks, like writing emails or sending written feedback to students or parents. “It felt like a kind of betrayal,” Amelie said. She thought something was amiss when person-to-person communication became person-to-robot.
Along with the student council, they surveyed their peers about faculty use of A.I. “Ninety-eight percent said that receiving work from teachers that is A.I.-generated diminishes both their learning and their opinion of the teacher. One hundred percent of respondents said they wish teachers were required to cite any use of A.I. Following a unanimous student council vote, we sent our proposal that A.I. should be cited by the faculty,” the trio wrote to me in an email. As of Friday, when I spoke to them over video chat, they were still waiting for a response.
To effect change, teens also need a critical mass of their schoolmates to share their skepticism. When I talked to Joaquin Imaizumi, who is 16 and in the 11th grade at a public school in Pennsylvania, he said he was glad to hear that other teens had Luddite leanings, because he feels fairly isolated in his screen-reluctant beliefs. “I’m in the minority,” he said, even among his closest friends. But that just makes him want to get more involved in connecting with other like-minded teens. Imaizumi told me that he’s planning to do a short testimonial at a districtwide meeting about technology use. The unquestioning embrace of screens among his peers gives him “existential anxiety.” (Same, Joaquin, same.)
What inspired me the most about these teens is how comfortable they were being everyday activists in their own school communities, even when they weren’t met with universal support. The idea that organizing might possibly be cool is such a refreshing change since I was a high schooler. At least at my suburban public school in the ’90s, apathy was the vibe, and being a try hard was beyond embarrassing.
Avery Schromm’s school paper did a story about her Chromebook crusade, and one student told reporters that he joined the opposition to the policy for the joy of the ride. “Honestly, it was less me, like, actually caring about it and more me just, like, hopping on the bandwagon … it was fun to be, like, stick it to the man,” he said.
I know it will make it instantly uncool that I, a mom, love everything about this. But I will continue to applaud it just the same.
End Notes
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I just rewatched “To Die For,” a 1995 Gus Van Sant dark comedy starring Nicole Kidman. Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, a small-town girl with television morning show aspirations. She is desperate to be famous by any means necessary, and the film is incredibly perspicacious about the human desire to watch and be watched that we now see on social media. It feels like “To Die For” predicted the incentives of the attention economy decades ahead. Or as Stone says in the movie, “What’s the point in doing something good if nobody’s watching?”
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