When school researcher Louise Klinge sits at the back of a primary school class and looks at the students' computer screens, it is often not schoolwork she sees.
- There are students sitting and shopping, streaming, playing, and even watching porn during class, she says.
Louise Klinge spends a large part of her working hours conducting observation studies in Danish primary school classes. And according to her, a class with students behind their own computer screens can look calm to the teacher, even though the students are doing something completely different than the teaching.
>
> When the teacher comes and asks if they need help, they say no,
> because then they can quickly get back to playing
>
- There are students who tell me that when the teacher comes and asks if they need help, they say no, because then they can quickly get back to playing, she says.
Therefore, computers are difficult to manage in the classroom, she believes.
- It is an invisible distraction, because they can just swipe away at any time. So it is very, very difficult for teachers to see it.
Louise Klinge believes that politicians should look at the computer screen, which she believes weakens students' concentration and thus their academic skills.
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They use the computer as they used the phone
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After the disappointing Pisa results, which showed that Danish school students perform worse in reading, mathematics, and science than ever before, the government announced that mobile phones must be completely removed from primary school - to improve students' academic skills.
But according to Louise Klinge, politicians are overlooking the screen that takes up the most space in teaching. Namely, the computer screen.
In many upper-primary classes, the computer is a fixed part of almost all lessons. This weakens students' ability to immerse themselves, Louise Klinge assesses.
- It is a free pass to only talk about the mobiles, she says.
- It is a very small answer to a much bigger problem, namely that most of the teaching in really many classes in the upper grades happens behind a computer. And that has enormous costs, she says.
She gets support from classroom management researcher Dorte Ågård, who has also observed teaching in school. According to her, the problem of lack of immersion does not necessarily move out of the classroom just because the mobile does.
>
> The children do on the computer what they previously did on the phone. It can be
> TikTok, games, or something else
>
- The children do on the computer what they previously did on the phone. It can be TikTok, games, or something else. And it distracts both themselves and the teaching, says Dorte Ågård.
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The mobiles get the blame
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It was otherwise the screens - or rather the private screens such as mobiles and tablets - that politicians had in focus after the disappointing Pisa results.
- We, as adults, have allowed children and young people to spend far too many hours a day in front of a screen, said Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S) at the press conference.
The government's solution is that mobiles must be completely out of school, both in teaching and during breaks. But politicians did not mention computer screens.
And they should include them, says Dorte Ågård.
- It has been detrimental to students' learning that we have digitalized so much. Denmark has some of the most digitalized schools and has at the same time seen a huge drop in academic results. My clear expectation is that less computer use will help students academically.
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Use of computers in primary school
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When a primary school student sits alone and works on a task, it happens in seven out of 10 cases on a screen. That will typically be on their own computer.
This is shown in a report on screens in primary school from Aarhus University, which was published in 2025.
Source: Aarhus University
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Danish students take digital first place
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Danish students rank first in using digital tools in school, could be read in the Pisa survey.
On average, Danish students spend 3.2 hours a day on digital learning materials, such as computers. And even though the government has previously made a number of recommendations ( https://uvm.dk/media/0zfnyiyy/240205anbefalinger-grundskole-final.pdf ) to limit screen use in school, a large part of teaching, assignments, notes, and tasks take place digitally.
Instead of spending money on books, notebooks, and physical teaching materials, municipalities spend money on digital learning portals, where students can learn to solve tasks in all subjects.
- It is a really big dilemma that many schools are obliged to use certain teaching materials. Therefore, even more money must be set aside for analog teaching, says Louise Klinge.
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S: We have been too tech-enthusiastic
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The government party Socialdemokratiet is willing to join that. Here, they also acknowledge that the solution is not solely to take the students' mobiles away from them.
- It is not done with the private phones at all. We need to get the mobiles out because it is a very disruptive element. But the screens are also a very big problem, says Matilde Powers, who is education spokesperson for the Social Democrats.
Have you politicians failed the children and their academic skills by putting computers in front of them to such a high degree as is the case in Denmark today?
- Yes. We have been too tech-enthusiastic. The intentions were good when more technology was introduced, but it went too far, and today we see that it harms children's learning and their ability to focus, says Mathilde Powers.
She says that as an initiative, they will work on setting up firewalls at all schools, which prevent access to certain websites, while also reaching out to the school's stakeholders to hear what schools need to limit computer screens.
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