ICLE Comments to the FCC on Ensuring Children’s Safe Use of Screens
I. Introduction and Overview
The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submits these comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on ensuring children’s safe use of screens.[1] ICLE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that applies law & economics methods to public policy. Its work promotes sound economic analysis and consumer welfare, particularly in dynamic, technology-driven markets such as telecommunications.
ICLE welcomes the FCC’s efforts to modernize and improve the E-Rate program. Connecting schools and libraries is a critical mission of the Universal Service Fund (USF). Through E-Rate, people who cannot afford or access broadband at home—or choose not to subscribe—can still benefit from connectivity.
Those benefits come at a cost. When E-Rate spending adds no value or harms its intended beneficiaries, consumers bear a higher tax on their broadband bills without a meaningful benefit.[2] The FCC should therefore review its rules, ensure that funding serves the purposes Congress prescribed, and limit spending that does not.
Subsidies are generally defensible only as a second-best policy tool—when better options are unavailable. That constraint matters even more when a tax on a particular service, rather than general tax revenue, funds the subsidy: Every dollar of support comes from the same subscribers the program seeks to serve. Among the programs USF supports, E-Rate is nevertheless the least objectionable. Its focus on connecting schoolchildren targets a benefit that plausibly exceeds the burden on ratepayers.
The FCC should not, however, use this proceeding to impose restrictions on connectivity in schools and libraries that exceed its statutory authority and do little to advance the program’s goals. E-Rate focuses on access to broadband services. Congress limited its content restrictions to specific categories it deemed harmful to minors; it did not grant the FCC broad authority to dictate how schools and libraries use that connectivity.
Even if Congress had granted that authority, current evidence suggests that screen-time limits do little, if anything, to improve outcomes or protect students. The FCC should focus on running E-Rate efficiently and targeting support to schools that need help connecting their students, rather than mandating how they use those tools and services.
II. Preserve Access While Targeting E-Rate Support
E-Rate’s statutory purpose is to connect schools and libraries, not to guarantee better educational outcomes. The FCC should assess the program on that basis and target support to institutions that need it to maintain affordable access. This approach would preserve the connectivity Congress requires while reducing unnecessary spending and the burden on telecommunications consumers.
A. E-Rate’s Statutory Purpose Is Access
Section 254 of the Communications Act frames the schools-and-libraries program in terms of access. Among the universal service principles Congress established, schools, classrooms, and libraries “should have access to advanced telecommunications services.”[3] The statute directs the FCC to “enhance, to the extent technically feasible and economically reasonable, access to advanced telecommunications and information services” for elementary and secondary school classrooms and libraries.[4] The “educational purposes” language in § 254(h)(1)(B) defines which services qualify for a discount, regardless of educational outcomes. This focus reflected conditions when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996: Only 14% of classrooms had internet access, and legislators viewed that access as critical to preparing students for the future.[5]
The FCC’s goals likewise focus on access. When it modernized E-Rate in 2014, the agency adopted three performance goals: ensuring affordable access to high-speed broadband sufficient to support digital learning, maximizing cost-effectiveness, and simplifying the application process.[6] None measures student learning. The NPRM acknowledges that neither Congress nor the FCC has set goals for educational outcomes.[7]
Some nevertheless defend E-Rate as an investment in learning itself. But empirical studies find no statistically significant improvements in student achievement in mathematics, reading, or science, even after allowing for delayed effects.[8] If improved educational outcomes is essential to justify continued spending, the program should end.
Judged by access, however, E-Rate has largely succeeded. Today, 99.3% of America’s schools have a high-speed broadband connection, and at least some would lack that connectivity without the subsidy. Maintaining connectivity, however, requires recurring spending. Most E-Rate funding now supports existing connections rather than new ones.
In funding year 2025, applicants requested about $1.8 billion for Category One services—the recurring internet access and data transmission services that connect schools and libraries to the network.[9] They requested another $1.4 billion for Category Two internal connections, including Wi-Fi access points, routers, and switches that wear out and require replacement every few years.[10]
Many districts could absorb these costs without E-Rate. Others could not. Rural areas face higher average costs of providing broadband and, consequently, higher prices. Low-income communities have limited local tax bases. In both, recurring service costs can exceed what local budgets can support. Without E-Rate, schools and libraries risk letting connections degrade, delaying equipment replacement, or switching to lower-capacity service—potentially undoing gains the program has already funded.
B. Target E-Rate Support to Institutions That Need It
E-Rate’s value lies in the connectivity it provides to students. But many schools can meet their students’ technology needs without shifting those costs to telecommunications consumers nationwide. If the FCC narrows the program, it should focus on whether recipients need the support. The strongest case for subsidies arises where the market would not otherwise sustain affordable service. That supports targeting assistance to institutions that need it, rather than subsidizing districts that could readily pay for connectivity themselves.
The FCC should make clear that better targeting does not, by itself, justify a subsidy. Even a targeted subsidy can impose costs that exceed its benefits once the agency accounts for deadweight loss—the economic value lost when the surcharge discourages communications use. Support is warranted only where connectivity gains for schools that would otherwise go without affordable service exceed that loss. No one has demonstrated that balance across the program. Each funding year, the FCC should bear the burden of justifying support; ratepayers should not have to keep funding connections that districts would purchase anyway. Nor would invoking better educational outcomes materially change the analysis in this proceeding: Research finds that E-Rate largely does not improve those outcomes.
These reforms matter because mandatory contributions from telecommunications providers finance USF, and providers pass those costs to customers through line-item surcharges.[11] The contribution factor—the rate used to calculate providers’ payments—functions as one of the largest hidden taxes on American telecommunications consumers. Its burden is also regressive, falling more heavily on consumers with less ability to pay.[12]
These surcharges tax users regardless of their ability to pay and impose economic costs beyond the revenue they collect. Each increase in an already high contribution factor destroys proportionally more value by discouraging communications use.[13] Reducing E-Rate spending where recipients no longer need it to maintain access would directly ease that burden. A smaller, better-targeted program would lower consumers’ bills, reduce distortions in communications markets, and relieve pressure to tax broadband itself to sustain a fund whose obligations have outgrown its contribution base.
The FCC cannot, however, eliminate E-Rate entirely. The program remains an important means of connecting students to modern communications and learning tools, and Section 254 expressly requires support for schools and libraries. That requirement does not oblige the FCC to preserve E-Rate’s current scope. Instead, the agency must follow the statute’s limits, rather than allow the program’s history to dictate its size.
The Supreme Court upheld USF’s structure because § 254 limits the FCC to funding essential, affordable, and widely used services for the recipients Congress designated, including schools and libraries.[14] Courts no longer broadly defer to agency interpretations, and the statute’s use of “shall” does not leave the FCC free to withhold the required support. Ending E-Rate entirely would require congressional action. This proceeding should therefore focus on narrowing the program.
III. Screen-Time Limits Exceed CIPA’s Scope and Lack Evidentiary Support
The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) authorizes targeted content restrictions, not general limits on internet use. The FCC should not extend those conditions beyond Congress’ directive. Even if the agency had that authority, the evidence does not establish that screen-time limits on E-Rate-funded networks would improve learning or protect students. Such limits would impose costs on schools and libraries, restrict instructional technology, and burden students who depend on school connectivity.
A. CIPA Authorizes Content Filters, Not Screen-Time Limits
The NPRM asks whether CIPA gives the FCC authority to restrict internet access.[15] CIPA allows the agency to impose certain conditions on schools and libraries that receive E-Rate support. It requires them, for example, to adopt policies that prevent minors from accessing obscene material and material harmful to minors.[16] But that authority concerns specific categories of speech unprotected as to minors, not internet use generally.
CIPA regulates the content minors may access, not how long they may spend online. Its filtering requirements turn on defined content categories. A covered school or library must certify that it enforces a “technology protection measure” that blocks access to visual depictions that are obscene, constitute child pornography, or, for minors, are “harmful to minors.”[17] The statute defines a “technology protection measure” as technology that blocks or filters access to the specified material, rather than the internet generally.[18] “Harmful to minors” covers only visual depictions that appeal to a prurient interest, depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.[19] These provisions identify content that schools must block; they do not authorize the FCC to regulate the time, frequency, or volume of internet use.
The Supreme Court upheld CIPA in United States v. American Library Association in part because Congress identified specific categories of content that public funds should not support in schools and libraries.[20] The Court treated the law as a targeted funding condition that limited access to unprotected or harmful images. It also relied on the ease of disabling filters for adults to address concerns about the law’s breadth.[21]
Congress has broad latitude to attach conditions to federal assistance, but it may not “induce” recipients to engage in unconstitutional conduct, including violations of students’ First Amendment rights.[22] Extending CIPA’s restrictions to all constitutionally protected content—even through a limit on how long minors may access it—would raise serious First Amendment concerns.[23]
The NPRM’s proposed internet safety policy requirements would go beyond the targeted speech restrictions the Court upheld. Section 254(l) requires those policies to address minors’ access to “inappropriate matter.”[24] “Matter” refers to content that could harm students. A screen-time limit would restrict access to a much broader range of content, regardless of whether it poses that harm.
The NPRM also suggests that “unauthorized access” could include exceeding a prescribed number of hours online.[25] That reading ignores the statutory context. Congress paired “unauthorized access” with “hacking” and “other unlawful activities,” placing it alongside computer intrusions and illegal conduct, rather than ordinary use of a school network beyond a time limit.
The Supreme Court rejected a similar reading in Van Buren v. United States. It held that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s phrase “exceeds authorized access” concerns whether a user may enter a system or a particular area within it, rather than whether the user misuses access already available to them.[26] Reading CIPA’s “unauthorized access” language to cover otherwise permitted use would turn an anti-hacking provision into a general usage cap that Congress never enacted.
Congress also expressly reserved decisions about inappropriate content to local authorities. Section 254(l)(2) assigns those decisions to the local school board, educational agency, library, or other responsible authority. It bars federal agencies from establishing criteria for those decisions, reviewing them, or considering the criteria when administering E-Rate. A federally prescribed screen-time limit would bypass that directive by allowing the FCC to decide what harms minors and impose restrictions on that basis.
B. The Evidence Does Not Support Federal Screen-Time Limits
Even if CIPA authorizes the FCC to condition E-Rate funding on screen-time restrictions, the evidence that those restrictions protect students or improve educational outcomes is weak. The NPRM assumes that reducing children’s time on school-owned screens and networks would improve learning and protect them from harms such as bullying.[27] The research does not establish that premise.
Several recent research reviews, including ICLE’s, find that digital technology use typically explains less than 1% of the variation in adolescent well-being.[28] A 2025 meta-analysis combining results from 46 studies found an association of 0.061, below the 0.10 threshold researchers generally consider the minimum of evidentiary interest.[29] A Cambridge review of 143 studies covering nearly 1.1 million adolescents found that social media use accounts for roughly 1.4% of the variation in anxiety and depression.[30]
Even these small associations may overstate technology’s effects. Self-reported screen time correlates weakly with logged use, and adolescents who already struggle often turn to their devices more. That can produce a positive correlation between device use and distress without showing that the devices caused it.
For educational outcomes, school phone restrictions offer the strongest available evidence. They are the only device-use policies that multiple rigorous studies have evaluated across different periods and jurisdictions. Their effects on achievement are modest and inconsistent:
- Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy found modest test-score gains in schools that banned classroom phone use, with larger gains among lower-achieving students.[31]
- David Figlio and Umut Özek found small test-score improvements in Florida.[32]
- Sara Abrahamsson found that middle-school girls’ grade-point averages in Norway rose by 0.08 standard deviations after two years, but found no significant effects for boys or from less restrictive policies.[33]
- Victoria A. Goodyear et al. found no difference in academic attainment or disruptive classroom behavior between schools that restricted daytime phone use and those that permitted it.[34]
A 2024 literature review also found stronger evidence of benefits to social well-being than to academic performance.[35] At most, phone restrictions may produce small academic gains in some settings and none in others.
Those studies also evaluate a different intervention from the one the NPRM proposes. Removing students’ personal phones from classrooms addresses a distraction that competes with instruction. A screen-time limit on E-Rate-funded networks would instead restrict school-managed, filtered, and largely instructional technology use while leaving personal phones untouched. Nothing in the phone-restriction literature shows that capping instructional technology use improves achievement, and evidence on mandatory time limits points in the opposite direction.
Moreover, students with phones and cellular data could simply leave the E-Rate-funded network. The rule would restrict supervised, filtered access while pushing use onto unfiltered connections. Students who depend on school connectivity because they lack alternatives would bear the greatest burden.
The evidence likewise does not support screen-time mandates as an anti-bullying measure. The NPRM cites Abrahamsson’s finding that smartphone bans in middle schools reduce bullying.[36] But that study concerns personal phones—a policy schools and states are already adopting. A federal limit on E-Rate network use would add nothing to those policies and would not reach phones using cellular service. Restricting access for students without cellular service could instead increase social exclusion.
ICLE’s review also found that evidence linking device use to harm through bullying and social exclusion is generally weak and often contradictory.[37] Bullying is a behavioral problem. Limiting minutes online does not address the associated offline behaviors.[38]
Schools already have better tools to address these concerns. CIPA requires them to educate students about appropriate online behavior, including cyberbullying awareness and response. These initiatives address bullying’s causes and effects while preparing students to navigate online spaces inside and outside the classroom. Research also suggests that programs teaching adolescents healthy technology-use strategies improve long-term well-being more effectively than outright restrictions.[39]
Screen-time restrictions would impose real costs: compliance burdens on schools and libraries, displacement of instructional technology, and harm to students who rely on school networks. The FCC should not adopt restrictions whose costs outweigh their limited benefits.
Schools nationwide are already experimenting with phone restrictions and adjusting instructional technology use in response to parents, teachers, and independent research. That includes findings, noted in the NPRM, that writing on paper offers advantages over using digital devices.[40] Local authorities can tailor these choices to districts, schools, and individual students, then revise them as evidence develops. The FCC should allow that process to continue rather than impose a uniform rule the evidence does not support.
IV. Conclusion
E-Rate has expanded connectivity for schools and libraries, including for people who lack internet access at home. The FCC should preserve those gains while targeting support to institutions that need it to maintain affordable access. Congress requires that support, but not the program’s current size. Reducing unnecessary subsidies would ease the burden on telecommunications consumers without sacrificing E-Rate’s statutory purpose.
The FCC should not condition that support on screen-time limits. CIPA authorizes targeted content restrictions, not general limits on internet use, and reserves decisions about inappropriate material to local authorities. Even if the FCC had broader authority, the evidence does not establish that limits on E-Rate-funded networks would improve learning or protect students. Such limits would impose compliance costs, displace instructional technology, and burden students who depend on school connectivity.
The FCC should focus on efficient funding and affordable access, while allowing schools and libraries to tailor technology policies to local needs and emerging evidence.
[1] Ensuring Children’s Safe Use of Screens and E-Rate Funded Services et al., WC Docket No. 26-133 et al., Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 26-41 (June 26, 2026), https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-26-41A1.pdf [hereinafter NPRM].
[2] See generally Reply Comments of the Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ., Reforming the High-Cost Program for an All-IP Future; Connect America Fund: A National Broadband Plan for Future High-Cost Universal Service Support, WC Docket Nos. 26-96 & 10-90 (Sept. 1, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/USF-High-Cost-Comments.pdf.
[3] 47 U.S.C. § 254(b)(6).
[4] Id. § 254(h)(2).
[5] News Release, Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, FCC Launches Modernization of E-Rate Program (July 19, 2013), https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-322288A1.pdf.
[6] Modernizing the E-Rate Program for Schools and Libraries, WC Docket No. 13-184, Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 29 FCC Rcd. 8870, 8880–94, ¶¶ 22–62 (2014) [hereinafter 2014 First E-Rate Order].
[7] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 28.
[8] Several studies have found that E-Rate has little impact on student achievement. Goolsbee and Guryan found that E-Rate increased the number of connected classrooms by 66% but had no measurable effect on student achievement. Austan Goolsbee & Jonathan Guryan, The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 9090, 2002), https://ssrn.com/abstract=321356. Hazlett, Schwall, and Wallsten found that E-Rate spending had no measurable effect on SAT scores in North Carolina from 1999 through 2013. Thomas W. Hazlett, Benjamin Schwall & Scott Wallsten, The Educational Impact of Broadband Subsidies for Schools Under E-Rate (May 17, 2016) (unpublished manuscript), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2796048. Tecza, Wallsten, and Lee found, at most, a minuscule relationship between broadband subsidies and school performance. Jakub Tecza, Scott Wallsten & Yoojin Lee, Do Broadband Subsidies for Schools Improve Students’ Performance? Evidence from Florida (Tech. Pol’y Inst., May 2023), https://techpolicyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/do-broadband-subsidies-for-schools-improve-students-performance.pdf.
[9] Wireline Competition Bureau Directs USAC to Fully Fund Eligible Category One and Category Two E-Rate Requests, CC Docket No. 02-6, Public Notice, 40 FCC Rcd. 3190 (2025).
[10] Id.
[11] See Comments of the Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ., Lifeline and Link Up Reform and Modernization et al., WC Docket No. 11-42 et al., at 3 (May 4, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Lifeline-Comments.pdf.
[12] Id.
[13] See Brian Albrecht, No, You Can’t Just Compare Tariff Rates and Income-Tax Rates, Truth on the Mkt. (Oct. 3, 2025), https://truthonthemarket.com/2025/10/03/no-you-cant-compare-tariff-rates-and-income-tax-rates.
[14] FCC v. Consumers’ Rsch., 606 U.S. 656 (2025).
[15] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 29.
[16] 47 U.S.C. § 254(h)(5)(B).
[17] Id.
[18] 47 U.S.C. § 254(h)(7).
[19] Id.
[20] See United States v. Am. Libr. Ass’n, 539 U.S. 194 (2003).
[21] Id. at 211–13.
[22] Id. at 214.
[23] See NetChoice v. Jones, 822 F. Supp. 3d 656 (E.D. Va. 2026) (finding that Virginia’s one-hour daily limit on social media use likely violated the First Amendment). Content-based restrictions aimed at protecting minors receive intermediate scrutiny only when they target speech unprotected as to minors. See Free Speech Coal. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461, 492 (2025).
[24] 47 U.S.C. § 254(l).
[25] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 38.
[26] Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021).
[27] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 5.
[28] Lura Forcum, Julian Morris & Ben Sperry, The Forbidden Feed: Adolescent Well-Being and the Limits of Social-Media Regulation 14 (Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ., Sept. 15, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/resources/the-forbidden-feed-adolescent-well-being-and-the-limits-of-social-media-regulation.
[29] Id at 9.
[30] Id.
[31] Louis-Philippe Beland & Richard Murphy, Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance, 41 Labour Econ. 61 (2016).
[32] David Figlio & Umut Özek, The Impact of Cellphone Bans in Schools on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida (Annenberg Inst., EdWorkingPaper No. 25-1315, 2025), https://doi.org/10.26300/9y5r-yx11.
[33] Sara Abrahamsson, Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health (Norwegian Sch. of Econ., Discussion Paper Series in Econ. No. 1/2024, 2024), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4735240.
[34] Victoria A. Goodyear et al., School Phone Policies and Their Association with Mental Wellbeing, Phone Use, and Social Media Use (SMART Schools): A Cross-Sectional Observational Study, 51 Lancet Reg’l Health Eur. 101211 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211.
[35] Forcum et al., supra note 28, at 21.
[36] NPRM, supra note 1, at 52; Abrahamsson, supra note 33.
[37] Forcum et al., supra note 28, at 11–13.
[38] Id.
[39] Id. at 39–40.
[40] NPRM, supra note 1, at 52.