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Imagine a second grader’s typical school day. They may start by completing a social studies quiz on a laptop. Next, they hunch over a tablet for reading time. Then, their teacher leads a math lesson on the classroom’s touchscreen whiteboard. Finally, when the student comes home in the afternoon, they turn on the TV “to relax.”
By the end of the day, the student is rubbing their eyes, distracted, irritable, and exhausted. This scene is becoming increasingly common for today’s elementary students.
With screen use surging in K-5 education, more students are exhibiting signs of screen fatigue—a condition characterized by eye strain, difficulty focusing, mental exhaustion, and behavioral changes. When a child complains of eye pain, it’s often dismissed as minor discomfort. But in reality, these symptoms are signaling a deeper disruption to their learning, development, and overall well-being.
As digital tools become more deeply integrated into school routines, educators face an urgent question: How can we reduce screen fatigue without sacrificing instruction or student engagement?
Movement-based learning can be the answer.
Grounded in cognitive science, movement-based learning reintroduces physical activity into the learning process. Movement boosts attention, memory, emotional regulation, and academic achievement. Best of all, kinesthetic strategies help children recover from the physical and mental toll of too much screen time, including screen eye fatigue.
Screens have gradually become a near-constant presence in children’s lives. Many of us fondly remember listening to the dial-up sounds on the family computer and waiting for a VHS tape to rewind before watching a movie. Nowadays, children have immediate access to streaming, gaming, texting, and digital learning with the simple press of a button or a tap on a screen. At what point is it too much?
A recent study found that Gen Z spends an average of 9 hours per day in front of a screen, which is about two hours more than the US and global average. Gen Alpha is likely to follow this pattern, as they are the first generation to have constant access to digital technology from infancy.
In fact, 81% of children aged 5-8 use a tablet, 59% use a smartphone, and 58% use gaming devices, often exceeding the recommended limits for their age. A UK study found that children’s screen time increased by a staggering 52% between 2020 and 2022, with nearly a quarter of young people using their smartphones in patterns consistent with behavioral addiction.
While educational technology has many benefits, like expanding access to information, personalizing learning, and increasing communication, it’s crucial to distinguish between active and passive screen use. Active use involves critical thinking, creativity, and meaningful engagement. Passive use involves filling out worksheets, watching videos, or scrolling without further thought, reflection, or interaction.
According to expert guidelines, young children should limit their passive screen use to less than an hour per day. Yet many children are regularly exceeding these limits, often by several hours. The result? A growing epidemic of screen fatigue, with serious consequences for children’s vision, health, development, and academic performance.
Extended screen use can lead to a handful of symptoms known as Computer Vision Syndrome or digital eye strain. These symptoms often go unnoticed or are misattributed to behavior issues, but they’re warning signs that a student’s visual system is under stress.
One of the most common complaints associated with excessive screen use is general eye strain. People experience sore, tired, burning, itchy, or dry eyes. Other symptoms, such as headaches, blurred vision, and sensitivity to light, may accompany this eye strain. This happens because sustained close-up focus on digital screens tires out the muscles that control our eyes.
When concentrating on a screen, we blink up to 50% less, causing our eyes to dry out. This leads to discomfort, redness, a gritty feeling, or even watery eyes, which ironically is a symptom of dryness. Children may not be able to articulate this well, but when a child complains of eye pain, dry eyes from prolonged screen use are often the culprit.
Constant focus at a fixed distance can temporarily impair the eyes’ ability to shift focus to distant objects. For students, this makes actions such as viewing the whiteboard across the room or participating in gym class after screen time difficult. Images may appear blurry and disorienting. Students might squint, rub their eyes, or seem disengaged when in reality, they’re struggling to adjust their vision.
Childhood myopia rates have climbed from about 24% in 1990 to nearly 36% in 2023. Future projections indicate that almost 40% of children worldwide will be nearsighted by 2050.
Research published in Jama Network Open found that each additional hour of daily digital screen use is linked to a 21% higher risk of myopia in children.
Because children often don’t express visual discomfort clearly, it’s important for adults to watch for physical and behavioral cues, such as:
The consequences of excess screen time go far beyond vision. Screen eye fatigue is part of a larger disruption that affects children’s physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development.
Sedentary behavior associated with screen time contributes to rising childhood obesity rates and can negatively impact cardiovascular and musculoskeletal health, even in very young children.
Blue light from screens suppresses melatonin production, making it harder for kids to fall and stay asleep. Add in stimulating content before bedtime, and you have a recipe for sleep deprivation, which impairs memory, focus, and learning ability.
Many children snack mindlessly or skip meals altogether while watching screens. Over time, this can lead to imbalanced diets, reduced appetite for substantial meals, and unhealthy eating patterns.
Too much screen time, especially without interactive peer engagement, can hinder communication and relationship-building skills. Children may struggle with social anxiety, reduced emotional vocabulary, and poor listening skills.
Intense digital engagement can contribute to anxiety, depression, cognitive burnout, and even “digital dementia.” This term describes the deterioration of memory, attention, and executive function due to overstimulation and information overload.
Research shows that early screen fatigue correlates with lower academic outcomes. Children exposed to heavy screen use may exhibit delays in language and cognitive development, limited vocabulary, and reduced performance in math and reading.
These issues don’t happen in isolation. When a child complains of eye pain, it’s often accompanied by difficulty focusing, disrupted sleep, and emotional irritability.
To address all of these concerns, a holistic, movement-based approach offers a practical, research-backed solution. By introducing meaningful movement into the classroom, we can help students feel better, learn more effectively, and reconnect with their bodies, peers, and academic content.
Ready to bring movement-based learning to your core subjects? Discover our Math and Literacy Kits, designed to ignite engagement and boost student achievement.
Our kits supplement your curriculum and provide comprehensive resources for:
Screen fatigue, along with the associated eye strain and sedentary behavior, represents a modern problem in education. The truth is that children are not wired to sit still for hours on end.
Have you ever heard of the “Fidget Factor”? It’s our body’s inherent, neurologically driven impulse to move. Our brains thrive on learning through exploration, movement, and interaction.
That said, movement during the school day isn’t just a bonus activity to add—it’s a biological necessity.
Movement-based learning benefits the brain just as much as the body.
Physical activity increases blood flow throughout the body, including to the brain, delivering oxygen and nutrients that optimize cognitive function. This improved cerebral circulation is beneficial for the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for thinking, comprehension, memory, language, computation, and judgment.
Furthermore, physical activity supports neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to form and maintain neural connections, by stimulating the release of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). In other words, when a person is physically active, their brain is ready to learn and create new neural pathways for information.
Additionally, physical activity promotes the growth of the hippocampus, a region of the brain responsible for learning and memory.
Studies also indicate that even subtle movements, like fidgeting, can improve our “working memory”—a brain function that temporarily stores and manipulates information.
All in all, movement fully supports brain function. Especially during early childhood, when rapid brain development is underway, movement is a critical ingredient for healthy physical and neurological growth. In fact, the development of executive functions in early childhood is a strong predictor of long-term academic achievement.
The benefits of movement extend to brain chemistry as well. Physical activity stimulates the release of endorphins, the brain’s natural feel-good chemicals. These mood boosters help people feel more energized, confident, and resilient, making them perfect for students who are learning and regulating emotions.
At the same time, movement reduces levels of cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone. In a time when children are facing rising levels of anxiety, overstimulation, and digital overload, movement acts as a natural stress reliever.
Perhaps most notably, movement increases dopamine, a neurotransmitter vital for motivation, focus, attention, and memory. For students with ADHD or attention challenges, this can be transformative. A movement-enriched classroom environment offers the neurochemical support these learners need to stay engaged and succeed.
The takeaway? Movement makes learning more fun and more effective. It activates the brain in ways that amplify learning, regulate emotion, and enhance concentration for all students.
Movement-based learning complements traditional instruction in a way that screens cannot. By reimagining how students engage with material, teachers can create more inclusive, energized, and effective classrooms—without screen fatigue.
Movement in the classroom allows students to spend less time on screens and more time learning through hands-on exploration. This time away from digital learning allows students’ eyes to rest and refocus, helping to prevent symptoms of eye strain, dryness, and blurred vision associated with screen eye fatigue.
Incorporating physical activity throughout the day—whether it’s jumping on a number line, acting out a vocabulary word, or walking through a math problem—gives students’ visual systems the variety they need to stay healthy.
Research from the National Training Laboratories suggests learners retain up to 75% of information when actively participating in a task, compared to only 10% through passive methods like reading or listening to lectures.
By physically acting out concepts or using tactile, hands-on tools, students form multi-sensory cognitive connections that make abstract material feel intuitive and concrete. Movement helps students “see” and “feel” their way through content, which improves both short-term comprehension and long-term mastery.
Remarkably, a 3rd grade class saw an average improvement of over 89% in multiplication after a two-week movement-based intervention using Math & Movement products and activities. Additionally, the performance gap between students narrowed by over 81%!
Want to head deeper into the research and results behind Math & Movement? Explore our Program Data page to see how schools across the US are transforming student achievement with our kinesthetic learning strategies.
Only one in four children in the US is getting the recommended amount of daily physical exercise. Movement-based learning helps children meet recommended physical activity levels, which builds habits that counterbalance digital overuse and support long-term health.
Movement-rich classrooms are also socially rich. Group-based physical activities give students regular opportunities to practice communication, leadership, and empathy. These experiences are essential for developing the social-emotional skills children need to navigate friendships, manage conflict, and contribute positively to group environments.
Teachers often observe that as students become more physically engaged, they also become more emotionally regulated and behaviorally responsive. Disruptions decrease, cooperation improves, and students become more attuned to their peers.
As screen time continues to rise in elementary classrooms, its effects are becoming harder to ignore. When a child complains of eye pain, loses focus mid-lesson, or struggles to engage, these may be symptoms of screen fatigue—a condition that reaches far beyond tired eyes.
Movement-based learning can help educators overcome the challenges of digital overload. By integrating physical activity and instruction, educators restore balance, mitigate the visual and mental toll of technology, and create a classroom that supports both students’ bodies and minds. Movement doesn’t just relieve symptoms like screen eye fatigue—it ignites focus, joy, collaboration, and academic growth.
If you’re wondering just how to reduce screen fatigue while improving student outcomes, Math & Movement is a great place to start. Our supplemental program enhances your existing curriculum with physical activity by incorporating active math movements, eye-catching floor mats and stickers, and engaging kinesthetic activities into your lessons.
Built for Busy School Schedules
Identify your school’s grade levels and instructional priorities—we’ll recommend the kits and materials that best support your academic goals.
Our materials come with free, ready-to-use activities—making it easy for teachers to add movement to lessons with minimal prep.
Most activities require little to no prep. Just roll out the mat and start teaching with movement.
Use activities as warm-ups, classroom lessons, or interventions. Also add to family engagement events, summer learning, and afterschool programs.
Our U.S.-based support team is dedicated to helping your school succeed with movement-based learning. Easily plan virtual or in-person PDs for your staff.
Our Whole School Kits include a collection of kinesthetic learning products tailored to your students’ grade levels and academic content. Explore our offerings to enhance math, literacy, SEL, and more in your school. Our materials make kinesthetic learning easy and accessible for every classroom.
Take the next step toward reducing screen fatigue and creating healthier classrooms!
Screen fatigue is a condition caused by prolonged exposure to digital screens. Some of the symptoms include eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, dry eyes, difficulty concentrating, and mental exhaustion. It’s especially common in children who spend hours using computers, tablets, or smartphones for school and entertainment.
Symptoms of screen fatigue in children include:
Over time, screen fatigue can also affect sleep, mood, and academic performance.
Some of the long-term consequences of excessive screen use in children are:
Excessive screen time can negatively affect children’s eyes by causing eye strain, dryness, blurred vision, and difficulty focusing on distant objects. When kids stare at screens for long periods, they blink less, which leads to dry and irritated eyes. Over time, this can also contribute to screen eye fatigue and increase the risk of nearsightedness (myopia) due to constant close-up focus and limited exposure to natural light.
To prevent screen fatigue, encourage regular breaks from digital devices and balance screen time with movement-based learning. Frequent physical activity gives children’s eyes a chance to rest and refocus, helping to reduce eye strain, dryness, and blurred vision. Incorporating active learning, like jumping, stretching, or hands-on games, can also improve focus, mood, and memory.
Eye strain, also known as asthenopia, is a common condition that occurs after prolonged visual concentration, especially from extended screen use. In children, it can cause headaches, blurred or double vision, dry or watery eyes, and discomfort. Regular movement and screen breaks can help relieve and prevent eye strain.
Waseda University. (2024, August 26). Short-duration, light-intensity exercises improve cerebral blood flow in children. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240826131216.htm
Suzy Koontz, CEO and Founder of Math & Movement, has spent over 25 years helping students achieve academic success. She has created over 200 kinesthetic teaching tools adopted by schools nationwide and has authored over 20 books. As a sought-after national presenter, Suzy shares how movement can transform the way students learn.
Movement isn't just for recess
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