This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter at nashvillebanner.com/newsletters.
Last spring, Elle Benson learned that her then-third grade daughter was watching violent content at school, on a school-issued laptop.
Her YouTube algorithm was feeding her videos with titles like “Scariest thing on the Internet,” “Zombies eat babies” and “You’ll never sleep again.” Indeed, the 9-year-old developed issues with sleep and anxiety, but when approached by her mom, said that she “couldn’t stop” watching.
“It was really alarming,” Benson, whose daughter attends a public school in Davidson County, told the Nashville Banner. She added that it was infuriating to know that her daughter was harmed at school. When she approached the school district, officials responded that their internet policy was in compliance with current law, according to Benson.
Legislators are now considering several laws that would address school districts’ internet use and technology policies.
House Bill 1886/Senate Bill 1912, introduced by Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, and Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, would restrict students’ access to certain online content while at school. The House Education Committee voted 18-1 Tuesday to recommend the bill for passage.
“It’s much easier to just sit on the sidelines with a blacklist and when a student accesses something inappropriate, say, ‘I hope there wasn’t any damage done to your child,'” Cepicky said. “What we’re asking them to do is get on the front end of this, start working proactively to create sites that we know are safe for our students to go to.”
Pediatrician Dr. Nidhi Gupta shared examples with the committee from among her patients, including an 11-year-old who used a school laptop to chat with an adult stranger, a 10-year-old who encountered graphic sexual content on a school device and a 9-year-old who was cyberbullied through a school email account.
She argued that educational technology has “limited to no academic benefit” and instead exposes students to “harmful content, distracting them from learning and collecting their data for monetization.”
Under current law, school districts must “seek to prevent access” by students to “harmful” online content. The bill would expand those requirements starting in the 2027-28 academic year, by only permitting access to a limited number of websites.
School districts and charter schools would be tasked with deciding which websites are acceptable for student use and would undergo an annual audit to ensure compliance. Internet providers that contract with school districts would block access to all other websites, including content that is harmful, pornographic or obscene, violent or frightening, has no educational value or promotes self-harm.
Some Democratic lawmakers raised concerns, including Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, who pointed to the “huge spectrum” of book bans among school districts across the state. He warned that without a statewide standard for what online content is considered acceptable, school districts’ internet use policies could follow a similar path.
Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, who voted against the bill, argued that restricting a large number of websites could make it difficult for students to conduct research online or do homework.
Later in the day, Gupta testified again, this time in support of a separate bill that would prohibit K-5 schools from giving students digital devices, including laptops. She pointed to research that paper reading and writing allow for deeper comprehension and learning. The House Education Administration Subcommittee deferred voting on House Bill 2393/Senate Bill 2310 to continue deliberations.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.