Law enforcement and Screen Guardians urge Kansas schools to prioritize digital‑safety education

A presentation from Screen Guardians founder Katie Longhauser and Detective Kevin Chronister, lead detective with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC), warned the Kansas State Board of Education on Sept. 10 about the scale and severity of online risks facing students and recommended expanded education for students, teachers and parents.

Longhauser outlined cognitive, mental‑health and classroom‑learning harms tied to excessive or poorly supervised screen use. She said screens are engineered to capture attention, overstimulate children’s reward pathways and can reduce motivation and empathy. “Screens are not neutral,” she said, citing research linking more than four hours per day of screen use with higher rates of anxiety and depression in some studies.

Detective Chronister described law‑enforcement trends: a national increase in cyber tips, sharp rises in generative‑AI misuse and online enticement, and a backlog of reported cases. “I have right now over probably 2,000 cyber tips sitting in my queue,” he told the board, and law enforcement cannot investigate most tips proactively. Chronister said many incidents are preventable with better education: “A majority of my cases that I see are 100% preventable.”

Both presenters recommended a prevention-first strategy focused on education. Proposed steps included curriculum and professional development for teachers, student-facing digital‑safety lessons, accessible parent training, tools to assess in‑school device use, and stronger community coordination. They described a k–12 program, Screen Guardians, designed by health‑care and law‑enforcement experts to address health, safety and privacy risks.

Chronister highlighted specific case examples to illustrate risks. One involved online communication routed through a student’s school email account and resulted in an arrest for kidnapping and sexual offenses; another involved a Snapchat group where senior students shared nonconsensual explicit images that were circulated across cohorts.

Board members raised questions about parental responsibility, enforcement, school device filtering limits and potential policy options including phone‑free environments in some schools. Presenters urged districts to adopt proactive education and parent‑engagement strategies, and to treat content filtering as a partial safeguard that must be paired with education and privacy protections.