Why some Catholic schools are going low-tech in the age of AI
Some U.S. Catholic schools are eliminating 1:1 device programs, opting for shared computer carts instead of laptops for students. Educators report that students learn more and retain better without constant device use, citing the value of human interaction over screens. Research and the U.S. Surgeon General warn that excessive screen time harms attention, grades, and health, with projections of increased myopia in children by 2050. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas cautions against overuse of technology in schools, urging slower, relational learning rather than digital acceleration.
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Catholic schools such as Holy Family (Virginia), Erie Catholic (Pennsylvania), Marian High (Indiana) and Regina Pacis Academy (Connecticut) are scaling back or eliminating one‑to‑one device programs, opting for shared technology carts, chalkboards and textbooks. Leaders cite research on screen‑time harms, the U.S. Surgeon General’s warning, and Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas as reasons to prioritize face‑to‑face interaction, deep comprehension and interpersonal skills over constant digital engagement. While technology remains part of the curriculum for digital‑literacy, these schools report improved retention, higher enrollment and stronger relational abilities among students. 1
Excessive screen time is linked to poorer attention, lower grades, reduced recall and reading difficulties, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2026 advisory. Dan Guernsey of Ave Maria University notes that laptops have not raised test scores and may contribute to a projected rise in childhood myopia by 2050. 1
Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas cautions against overreliance on technology in schools, emphasizing that true education requires research, reflection, discernment and shared human interaction that digital tools cannot replace. 1
Educators report that reduced screen time leads to better concentration, higher retention of material, and stronger face‑to‑face communication skills. Students at tech‑free schools demonstrate confidence in eye contact, articulation of views and debate, attributes valued as more difficult to cultivate in highly digital environments. 1
Assess Catholic education’s stance on technology use
Catholic education takes a qualified and formative approach to technology: it welcomes technology as a fruit of human creativity and a means of education, communication, service, and human development, but rejects the idea that technological innovation is automatically beneficial or that digital efficiency can replace human judgment, relationships, contemplation, and faith.
Catholic teaching does not treat technology as inherently sinful or spiritually suspect. Human creativity reflects the image of the Creator, and technological work can express humanity’s responsibility to cultivate and care for creation. Laudato Si’ recognizes the extraordinary benefits of technology in medicine, engineering, communications, and sustainable development.
Similarly, Caritas in Veritate describes technology as a profoundly human reality connected with freedom, labor, and the ability to improve living conditions. Technology can help humanity exercise responsible dominion over the material world and serve the common good.
This gives Catholic schools a positive mandate to teach science, engineering, digital skills, and technological literacy. The Congregation for Catholic Education states that science and technology belong to the created universe and that students should be helped to see their harmony with faith. Properly formed students can then place technology “at the service of men and women, and at the service of God.”
Accordingly, Catholic education should not simply resist computers, the internet, artificial intelligence, digital media, or online learning because they are new. Nor should it romanticize a pre-technological past. The question is whether technology is being directed toward truth, human dignity, authentic learning, solidarity, and the common good.
The central Catholic concern is not technology’s physical existence but the purposes and assumptions built into its design and use. Pope Leo XIV states that technology is not inherently evil, but that it is “never neutral” in practice because it assumes the characteristics of those who develop, finance, regulate, and use it. Technology can heal, connect, educate, and protect, but it can also divide, exclude, and create new forms of injustice.
This means that Catholic schools must ask more than:
They must also ask:
The Catholic position therefore differs from both technological enthusiasm and technological rejection. Pope Leo frames the choice not as a simple “yes” or “no” to technology, but as a choice between using power for domination and using it cooperatively to rebuild human community.
Catholic education is concerned with the integral formation of the person—the development of intellectual, moral, social, spiritual, and vocational capacities. Technology is useful, but it cannot define the whole purpose of education.
The Second Vatican Council recognizes that scientific and technological progress creates new possibilities for culture and communication. At the same time, it warns that education must preserve contemplation and observation, which lead to wisdom, and must harmonize technological culture with tradition and the search for meaning.
This is an important distinction:
Benedict XVI warns that technology can become self-sufficient when society concentrates on “how” things are done while neglecting the deeper “why” questions. If efficiency and utility become the only criteria, truth itself risks being reduced to whatever is technically possible or practically useful.
For Catholic schools, this means that technology should support—not displace—the humanities, philosophy, theology, literature, history, the arts, moral reasoning, and direct engagement with reality. These disciplines help students ask what human beings are for and what constitutes a good life.
Catholic education is fundamentally relational. A school is not merely a system for transmitting content; it is a community in which teachers and students encounter one another as persons.
The Congregation for Catholic Education emphasizes that teaching cannot be based exclusively on technical or professional relations. It must be nourished by “mutual esteem, trust, respect and friendliness.” Learning in a setting of belonging differs profoundly from learning in an atmosphere of individualism, antagonism, or coldness.
This has direct consequences for digital education. Online platforms, recorded lessons, automated grading, and artificial intelligence may assist teachers, but they cannot fully substitute for:
Technology can mediate human contact, but Catholic education should resist treating persons as data points, users, consumers, or isolated learners. A student is not merely a mind receiving information but a person being formed through relationships, responsibility, community, and openness to God.
Because young people encounter information through social media, online communities, and informal digital environments, schools can no longer assume that they are the primary or exclusive places where learning occurs. The Congregation for Catholic Education observes that the abundance of information and the growing influence of virtual communities create a new educational challenge: students need critical tools so that they are not dominated by new media.
Catholic digital formation should therefore include:
Students should learn to distinguish truth from rumor, evidence from assertion, expertise from popularity, and serious argument from manipulation. This is especially important when search engines, social media, or artificial intelligence generate convincing but inaccurate material.
The virtues required in face-to-face life also apply online: honesty, justice, charity, temperance, courage, and respect for the dignity of others. Anonymity does not remove moral responsibility.
Digital tools can foster distraction, compulsive consumption, and superficial engagement. Students need habits of silence, concentration, reading, reflection, and disciplined use. Authentic freedom is not the ability to follow every impulse but the ability to govern one’s actions toward the good. Benedict XVI explicitly connects responsible technological use with ethical formation and authentic freedom.
Students should understand how platforms may shape behavior through algorithms, commercial incentives, persuasive design, and the constant collection of personal data. The goal is not fear but freedom: students should be able to use digital tools without allowing those tools to determine their desires, attention, or identity.
Catholic education also has a justice dimension. Vatican II teaches that all people have a right to a human and social culture consistent with their dignity and that communities should work to make cultural benefits broadly available.
Applied to technology, this requires attention to:
A school that introduces sophisticated technology while neglecting disadvantaged students may deepen inequality rather than advance education. Digital access is important, but access alone is insufficient. Students also need competent teachers, supportive families, safe environments, and the intellectual and moral formation necessary to use technology well.
The identity of a Catholic school is not preserved by adding occasional religious content to a technologically driven curriculum. Technology must be integrated into a larger synthesis of faith, culture, and life, which the Congregation for Catholic Education identifies as the keystone of the educational mission.
This integration might involve:
The aim is neither to baptize every technology uncritically nor to isolate students from modern culture. It is to form students who can enter that culture with a well-formed conscience.
Catholic education’s stance can be summarized as critical appropriation: receive and use what is genuinely beneficial, while judging technology according to the truth about the human person and the ultimate purpose of life.
Its principal affirmations are:
Its principal cautions are:
The Catholic school therefore should be technologically capable but not technologically governed. It should teach students not merely how to use powerful tools, but how to remain free, truthful, responsible, contemplative, and oriented toward the service of God and neighbor. As Gaudium et Spes explains, technology can help develop the world and make it a more worthy dwelling for the human family, provided human culture remains directed toward truth, goodness, beauty, and worship of the Creator.