Two weeks before the start of the school year, EA students were frustrated by the sudden introduction of Securly, a digital safety tracker that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor and restrict students’ web activities on school-issued devices.
The installation has prompted widespread backlash across the student body. Of the 216 students who responded to a Scholium survey on their opinions of Securly, 42.1% strongly disapproved, 34.7% disapproved, 4.6% approved, 0.5% strongly approved, and 18.1% had no opinion. The deep opposition spans across different grades, though seniors (92% disapproval) were more likely to oppose the new software than freshmen (66% disapproval).
The program scans emails, online searches, and documents for any content that might indicate a student is in need of mental health support. If there is evidence that a student attempted to access such platforms, the school has permission to alert parents or guardians. Michael Letts, Head of Upper School, says, “I want to stress that we are certainly not spying on you, but there are triggers in Securly that if students are looking at anything [that] will send a red flag to us, we can make sure that a student is okay.”
Developed by Securly, Inc. in San Jose, CA, Securly aims to redirect students from potentially inappropriate content while remaining within the jurisdiction of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (a set of laws to protect children from harmful or explicit content that may appear when using school computers).
Securly builds upon principles that were previously introduced by LanSchool, a different, less intensive monitoring program. Similar to LanSchool, Securly has a set list of sites that cannot be accessed; however, these softwares differ in another monumental way. While LanSchool allows teachers to view students’ screens from afar during their class time or while on-campus and connected to EA’s WiFi network, Securly operates at all hours of the day, regardless of the WiFi network or location. Rather than teachers viewing websites and intervening themselves, Securly, with the use of AI, scans screens and audio before deciding if a site should or should not be blocked.
Letts says, “I don’t think it’s healthy for you as students to have free rein on the internet when there’s too much information out there. [There’s] too much accessibility to content that can be destructive in a number of different ways. We felt it was important to deny access to that.”
However, the aspect of Securly that stands out most to the affected students is the blocking of websites and the more extensive enabling of teachers to monitor screens in order to regulate digital interruptions. Sites that were used by students for learning support, such as MathGPT, are blocked, as well as sites for downtime entertainment, like Tubi. Videos that were meant for students’ homework have accidentally been blocked as well. Brennan Ungerleider ’29 says, “I tried to click on my history book, and it just didn’t work. It was blocked.”
Interestingly, mainstream AI-based sites, like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude, remain unblocked unless an individual teacher chooses to block them for the duration of their class. These inconsistencies have spread confusion. “They chose to block weird things but not others,” Ungerleider expresses. “Like, they chose to block Snapchat, but not Instagram.”
While students and teachers do not yet know the impact of having Securly on school-issued laptops, this school year is shaping up to be much different than last year’s. Letts’ final message was clear: “For the foreseeable future, as things are right now, I don’t think Securly is going away.”