How technology shapes learning, mental health, and development—and what schools and communities can do to support students from early childhood through high school
When United to Learn convened leading experts for a conversation on student wellness in the digital age, one message emerged clearly: We cannot eliminate technology. But we can design childhood around wellness.
At the February 12, 2026, Margaret J. Hirsch Women’s Forum, United to Learn’s annual series, presented this year in partnership with D Magazine, that brings together women leaders and community advocates to explore challenges facing Dallas public schools, moderator Christine Perez, Editor of D CEO, led a powerful conversation with three panelists: Dr. Jessica Gomez of the Momentus Institute, Neena Saulsberry-Gates of Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, and Dallas ISD District 2 Trustee Sarah Weinberg. Together, they examined how digital environments affect mental health and achievement, and shared strategies that support the whole child in today’s connected world.
Why Student Mental Health and Digital Wellness Matter for Academic Success
Understanding What “Digital Age” Really Means
“Technology is not just a tool—it’s the context in which we live,” Dr. Jessica Gomez, Executive Director of Momentous Institute, emphasized at the outset. This reframing is critical for understanding the challenges facing today’s students.
Digital devices are indeed prevalent and pervasive, but what fundamentally distinguishes the digital age is how technology shapes every aspect of child development. It influences how children learn, how they relate to others, how they sleep, and how they regulate their emotions. This isn’t simply about screen time—it’s about the entire environment in which children grow up.
The panel introduced a framework for understanding technology’s impact through three lenses: dose, content, and context. How much digital exposure are students getting? What content are they consuming? In what situations are they engaging with technology? These questions matter because digital activity affects core aspects of student wellness—emotional regulation, sleep quality, attention span, relationships, and sense of safety.
The Social, Emotional, and Mental Health Challenges Facing Students
Puberty Starting Earlier: A Fundamental Developmental Shift
“It’s not the same as when we grew up,” Dr. Gomez said. “Technology is shifting attention, and puberty is younger.”
Endocrinologists and pediatricians are documenting puberty beginning as early as 7 or 8 years old, significantly younger than previous generations. Multiple factors contribute to this shift, including chronic sleep deprivation and technology exposure.
The implications are profound. Puberty represents the second major period of brain development after infancy, triggering hormone cascades that affect the prefrontal cortex and limbic system. These changes influence emotion processing, reward systems, and executive function—and they’re now happening in elementary school. Big emotions, risk-taking behavior, and emotional volatility are appearing at younger ages, but our educational systems haven’t adapted to support children through these earlier developmental changes.
The Youth Mental Health Crisis by the Numbers
The statistics paint a sobering picture. More than 40% of students report feelings of hopelessness and sadness, with increased risk of suicide. Rising rates of emotional distress, anxiety, and depression affect students across all grade levels, with particularly acute challenges in the middle grades.
Neena Saulsberry-Gates, Director of School Mental Health at Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, emphasized the fundamental connection between wellness and learning: “If you don’t have mental health, you can’t show up in the classroom.”
The panel also highlighted disparities in access to healthcare, noting that not all students have equal access to mental health support—making school-based services even more critical.
The Impact on Student Achievement
Dallas ISD Superintendent Dr. Stephanie Elizalde asks a question that frames the district’s approach: “How do we set the environment for student achievement?”
The answer, according to the panel, begins with recognizing that behavior and mental health challenges must be addressed before learning can occur. “Academic success is social-emotional mental wellness,” Saulsberry-Gates stated plainly. “We’re having the data to support this.”
Technology’s impact on attention and executive functioning compounds these challenges. Digital environments affect the parts of the brain that sustain attention and regulate emotions. Many students “are not showing up in kindergarten ready to learn,” requiring schools to build foundational skills more intentionally.
Connection vs. Belonging: A Critical Distinction
Students can have hundreds of digital connections while experiencing profound loneliness. Anxiety and depression diagnoses are rising. Dr. Gomez explained what’s missing: right-brain-to-right-brain connection—the kind that happens through in-person interaction. Research shows that just 30 seconds of eye-to-eye contact unleashes oxytocin, creating the biological foundation for authentic human connection.
Saulsberry-Gates encapsulated these insights: “Sense of belonging and authentic connection—it’s not the same as being connected.”
The question educators and parents must ask: “What is technology replacing?” When students spend hours on devices, they’re not experiencing the face-to-face interactions essential for emotional development and building genuine relationships.
Current Approaches: How Schools Are Responding
Dallas ISD and schools across the region are implementing multiple strategies to address these challenges, from policy changes to comprehensive support systems.
Policy Implementation: Learning from Texas House Bill 1481
Texas House Bill 1481 mandates restrictions on personal electronic devices—including phones, smartwatches, and AirPods—during the school day to reduce distractions, combat cyberbullying, and improve mental health. Dallas ISD implements this law through its student code of conduct, using secure pouches for secondary students and device collection for elementary students.
Sarah Weinberg, Dallas ISD Trustee for District 2, shared measurable outcomes: the district has seen reduced discipline issues, increased student engagement, and more instructional time since implementation.
However, successful implementation required going beyond simple enforcement. Saulsberry-Gates emphasized the need to understand student needs: “What need was the cell phone fulfilling? When you take something away, what do we replace it with? Some students were scared to attend school without their phone—how do we meet the psychological safety need?”
Building Whole-Child Support Systems
Schools are implementing comprehensive approaches that address students’ full range of needs:
Middle Grade Reforms: Reframing the middle school curriculum through house systems helps students develop a sense of belonging and identity. “Have a house that they can at least identify with—have a sense of belonging,” Weinberg explained.
Counselor Access: Reducing student-to-counselor ratios ensures students can actually access mental health support when needed, not just have it theoretically available.
Tier 3 Mental Health Services: For students with acute mental health needs, schools provide access to specialized support services.
Soft Starts to Learning: “Soft start/slow start to learning each day—connecting before diving into the work,” the panel noted. This practice recognizes that students need emotional connection before they can engage academically.
Empowering Student Voice
United to Learn programs like Culture Champions and Teen Corps equip students with the skills to become peer influencers and process their experiences. “When we can, asking students what they need and how we can help with that,” Weinberg emphasized.
After a shooting at a location adjacent to Woodrow Wilson High School campus, student leaders—including members of the Save Promise Club, soccer team captains, and P-TECH leaders—were given space to process what happened and develop ideas and strategies to support their community.
Implementation Successes and Challenges
What’s Working Well
The data shows progress. Beyond reduced discipline issues and increased engagement, climate surveys are tracking psychological safety, asking students, leadership, and educators specific questions: “How psychologically safe do you feel in this building?”
Engagement metrics provide concrete data, tracking whether students have attended school-sponsored club meetings or participated in other community-building activities. “We want increasing climate surveys,” Weinberg noted, emphasizing the importance of continuous measurement.
Unintended Consequences and Complex Trade-offs
Saulsberry-Gates shared an important insight from the device policy implementation: “Parents weren’t angry about the cell phone ban—they were scared.”
This fear manifested in unexpected ways. Without access to their phones, students could no longer receive quick texts of encouragement from parents before tests. Teachers observed that students needed more emotional support throughout the day, increasing the burden on educators who already carry substantial responsibilities.
The district also had to navigate the tension between physical and psychological safety. Dallas ISD examined data on how security measures affect student experience: the very checkpoints in place to protect students’ physical safety made some feel they were not safe if they needed all that security.
“You can’t make policy fix everything,” Weinberg said. “You have to have a wellness mindset to fix things.” Policy provides structure, but sustainable change requires continuous attention and the flexibility to adapt as situations evolve.
Solutions and Resources: Building a Wellness Mindset
Looking forward, the panel outlined both immediate strategies and long-term systemic changes needed to support student wellness in the digital age.
Protect the Foundations
“Protect foundations—sleep, play, nutrition, community,” Dr. Gomez emphasized. These basics of child development cannot be compromised. The panel noted that “we are sleep deprived as a nation,” highlighting the need for communities to prioritize adequate rest for children. Unstructured play, proper nutrition, and authentic community connections form the bedrock upon which all other development rests.
Shape the Digital Environment
“We cannot eliminate technology, but we can design childhood around wellness,” Dr. Gomez emphasized. This means being intentional about dose, content, and context—and teaching students healthy navigation skills from an early age.
Build Skills Early
Schools must focus on language and early literacy, attention, and executive functioning. With technology impacting the parts of the brain that sustain attention and regulate emotions, these skills require explicit, early development.
Prioritize Adult Wellness
One of the forum’s most powerful themes centered on co-regulation. “We can’t regulate our teens or students if we can’t regulate ourselves,” the panel emphasized.
“Adult wellness is so important,” Saulsberry-Gates stated, noting that United to Learn focuses on this through programs designed for educators who have a weighty experience in the classroom and, for many, at home as parents too. Weinberg added: “When they’re well, they are much better able to serve students.” This isn’t an optional nice-to-have—it’s foundational to effective education.
Embed Wellness in Curriculum
“Writing [wellness] into the curriculum is so important, so it doesn’t become optional,” Weinberg noted. When wellness is embedded rather than added on, it survives budget pressures and time constraints.
Center Student Voice
“If we were to ask students what they need most to thrive in the digital age, what do you think they would tell us?” This question, posed during the forum, led to a powerful personal reflection from Saulsberry-Gates:
“I asked my 16-year-old daughter what she needs. She said, ‘I need to be seen.’ Instead of trying to therapize that or answer as her mother, I said, ‘I see you.'”
Sometimes the solution is simpler than we think. Students want to be seen and heard—not analyzed, not fixed, but genuinely acknowledged.
United to Learn’s Role as a Bridge
The forum highlighted how United to Learn serves as a bridge in the area of school culture and well-being, bringing together community members who care about education and have the capacity to contribute to meaningful change.
Dr. Gomez shared that organizations like the YMCA and First Tee are piloting foundational training on wellness and wellbeing. The premise is simple but profound: “Our brains were not designed for the pace you’re living at or the speed of communication.” However, she offered hope: “With mental health and wellness and physical wellness, you can tackle anything.”
Advice for Parents Navigating These Challenges
“Schools and parents are collaborators in the development of children,” the panel emphasized. Here’s what parents can do at home:
Model healthy digital behavior: Digital wellness isn’t just for students—it’s for all of us to model healthy behavior.
Pay attention to technology dose, content, and context: Be intentional about how much screen time, what content, and in what situations technology is used.
Prioritize in-person connection: Create opportunities for eye-to-eye contact and face-to-face interaction, such as family dinners.
Listen to what students need: Ask them directly, and sometimes the answer is as simple as “I need to be seen.”
Practice self-regulation first: Parents must attend to their own wellness before they can effectively support their children’s co-regulation.
Moving Forward: An Evolving Challenge
“We will always have work to attend to what is happening on the ground in the classroom because it is constantly evolving,” Weinberg acknowledged. The challenges facing students—earlier puberty, mental health crisis, technology saturation, sleep deprivation—are complex and interconnected.
But there is measurable progress. Dallas ISD has demonstrated that thoughtful policy implementation, when combined with a wellness mindset, can improve discipline, engagement, and instructional time. Programs focusing on adult wellness are helping educators show up better for students. Student voice initiatives are creating peer-to-peer support networks.
Most importantly, schools are learning to “hold space for wellness”—recognizing that attending to students’ mental health and basic human needs isn’t separate from academic achievement. It is the foundation.
As Weinberg noted: “We want to meet academic goals, but not at the expense of students.” This balance—protecting student experience while pursuing achievement—guides the work ahead.
Get Involved
After the Q&A, Haynes Boone partner and United to Learn board member Laura Whitley said, “Mental note—I need to stop putting my mental health on the backburner.” Whether you’re a parent, educator, or community volunteer, there are ways to put these insights into action.
Because, as the panel made clear, this work isn’t just for students. Digital wellness, mental health, and the ability to navigate our technology-saturated world with intention—these challenges and opportunities belong to all of us.
Learn more and get involved: Visit unitedtolearn.org/womens-forum to learn about upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.
FAQs
What is the Margaret J. Hirsch Women’s Forum?
The Margaret J. Hirsch Women’s Forum is an annual series of panel discussions presented by United to Learn in partnership with D Magazine. The forum brings together women leaders and community advocates to explore challenges facing the Dallas public school system and identify key levers of change. It is held three times per year in Dallas.
How does technology affect student mental health and academic achievement?
According to experts at the February 2026 Women’s Forum, technology shapes every aspect of child development — including how children learn, relate to others, sleep, and regulate their emotions. More than 40% of students report feelings of hopelessness and sadness. Digital environments affect the parts of the brain that sustain attention and regulate emotions, meaning many students are not arriving in kindergarten ready to learn.
What is Texas House Bill 1481 and what does it do?
Texas House Bill 1481 mandates restrictions on personal electronic devices — including phones, smartwatches, and AirPods — during the school day. The law aims to reduce distractions, combat cyberbullying, and improve student mental health. Dallas ISD implements it through its student code of conduct, using secure pouches for secondary students and device collection for elementary students.
Has Dallas ISD’s phone ban improved student outcomes?
Dallas ISD Trustee Sarah Weinberg reported measurable improvements following implementation of the device policy, including reduced discipline issues, increased student engagement, and more instructional time. However, the district also identified unintended consequences, including increased need for emotional support from teachers during the school day and concerns about psychological safety among some students.
What is the difference between connection and belonging for students?
Panelists at the Women’s Forum drew a sharp distinction: students can have hundreds of digital connections while still experiencing profound loneliness. Authentic belonging requires in-person, right-brain-to-right-brain connection. Research cited at the forum shows that just 30 seconds of eye contact triggers oxytocin — the biological foundation for genuine human connection — something that digital interaction cannot replicate.
What can parents do to support student wellness in the digital age?
Panelists recommended that parents model healthy digital behavior, be intentional about the dose, content, and context of their children’s technology use, prioritize in-person connection such as family dinners, ask children directly what they need, and attend to their own wellness first — since co-regulation requires adults to be regulated themselves.
Learn more and get involved: Visit unitedtolearn.org/womens-forum to learn about upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.