I find that a copout answer. Screens are inherently distracting. They literally flash and flicker. The devices that those screens are attached too have buttons and little jiggery bits. There's a ton of distracting software on those devices, browsers, games. The supposed learning software is all about gamification and slidey swoopy menus and other completely distracting BS.

So yes, "screens" as a pars pro toto for digital learning is inherently distracting. It's only when you reduce it so far as to be meaningless, - "a screen is just some LED-lights organized in a square, how's that different from paper," - that you can say they're not.

Yes, screens aren't inherently anything, but I think they're using "screens" as shorthand for the phone/social media/apps ecosystem that does have addictive qualities and is fairly well studied. Tons of good references in here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240116/

OTOH I think it's fair to say that something like an e-reader or a dumb watch has low-addictive qualities, and have screens.

My kids e-reader is super addictive.

My kids can spend hours and hours glued to it.

And god help me I'm so over the moon happy.

Both my kids have old school Casio's, and kindle e-readers. Totally agree with ya.

Yeah if that's an addiction, it's the best kind.

Where he speaks from intuition I speak from personal experience. Through my entire High School experience iPads and computers were more often used to play Clash Royale or Tetris in class than used for actual work.