Photo:
Emily Cherkin at Third Place Books, Ravenna. Photo: Alayne Sulkin
Emily Cherkin didn’t set out to take on Big Tech. She started as a classroom teacher in 2003. Back then, her students didn’t have smartphones, and social media wasn’t shaping their identities. Laptops were rare and internet access in schools was limited.
Then smartphones became ubiquitous, social media embedded itself into childhood and classrooms were never the same.
Today, Cherkin is a national advocate, a Senate witness and the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against PowerSchool, alleging student data is collected and sold without informed parental consent. Her message is clear and urgent.
You began as a classroom teacher. What did you see that shifted you from educator to advocate?
In the early years, technology wasn’t driving classroom behavior. But around 2010, students started coming to school emotionally hijacked by what happened online over the weekend with Facebook posts, exclusion and humiliation. I couldn’t teach because they were consumed by it.
At first, I thought it was a kid issue. I talked about kindness and online responsibility. Then my students told me, “Our parents are texting and driving. Our parents are on Facebook.” That’s when I realized: this isn’t a kid problem. It’s an adult problem that’s impacting children.
You’re the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against PowerSchool. What is at stake?
Our lawsuit alleges that PowerSchool, which owns products like Schoology and Naviance, is collecting student data and selling it to third parties without informed parental consent. Parents assume school platforms are safe. They don’t realize how much data is being harvested. Schools now average roughly 150 digital platforms per building. There’s no way families understand what they’ve agreed to.
Children’s data is incredibly valuable, especially in the AI era. Schools provide a captive population. This is not just about privacy. It’s about consent and power.
The landmark social media case in Los Angeles is getting national attention. How does that connect to education?
It’s laying the groundwork. The same business model driving social media — engagement, surveillance and attention extraction — is embedded in EdTech. The same persuasive design and algorithmic logic.
At the end of the day, the business model of Big Tech and EdTech is fundamentally at odds with child development. Period.
These companies are built to hook and hold attention. Children need focus, executive function and real human interaction. Those goals are incompatible.
Many parents believe school technology is necessary. What’s the problem?
There’s a huge difference between tech ed and EdTech. Children need technology education like coding, AI literacy and understanding how systems work. That doesn’t require giving 5-year-olds internet-connected devices.
Take Chromebooks. The entire purpose of a Chromebook is to connect you to the internet. The internet is not a safe place for children. Yet we’ve redesigned schools around constant connectivity because testing became digitized. It’s a backward approach. We should never redesign childhood around a device.
You’ve testified before lawmakers. What are policymakers missing?
They underestimate the long-term cognitive impact.
I’ve spoken with employers who say top engineering graduates cannot function as humans, they can code, but they can’t collaborate, communicate or problem-solve.
Those are the skills being eroded.
The EdTech industry is worth roughly $400 billion. That money isn’t strengthening schools. It’s extracting from them. This is a takeover of public education by private interests.
Until the business model changes, these products will never be safe for children.
If you could reset schools tomorrow, what would you change?
First, eliminate one-to-one, internet-connected devices for K–12 students. Second, conduct a full audit of every platform used in schools.Third, pause AI integration entirely, including teacher-facing tools. AI is an expert-level tool. Children are not experts. Return to computer labs, shared devices and intentional instruction. And parents need to ask questions. It’s not our fault but it is our responsibility.
Final question, what’s your favorite educational app?
A book.
If we use screens, let it be one screen, one family. Not isolated scrolling. We are at an inflection point. This is about protecting childhood, education and democracy. And we cannot afford to get it wrong.
