A Labour MP has warned the government that some primary school children are spending too long on Times Tables Rock Stars, a widely used maths homework app, the BBC reported. TT Rockstars lets children compete with classmates for virtual coins and rock-star outfits. Emily Darlington said the app and others like it could harm development because they reward "length of time rather than quality of time spent online." Bruno Reddy, founder of Maths Circle, the firm behind the game, said he shared concerns about screen time and was working with schools on curfews and time limits. "Every game in TTRS is deliberately short, and our characters remind children to take regular breaks," he said. "The rule of thumb we give schools is: three minutes, four or five times a week. In September, a typical child played on three days, for about six minutes each time." From Nov. 24, he said, "every school will have a curfew and a daily time limit switched on, and leaderboards switched off as default."

Darlington, the MP for Milton Keynes Central, told the BBC that education technology has a place "when gamification is used, children spend hours online to 'earn' the latest outfit." Parents, she said, worry about conflicts over device time and the pressure to perform against classmates, which could deter real-life activities. She raised the issue at the Commons Science Committee, which is investigating the impact of screen time and digital devices on children's brain development. Maths Circle says TT Rockstars and a related programme, Numbots, are used in 17,000 schools and more than 100,000 households. Reddy, a former maths teacher, said the app was designed to "boost learning in the classroom" and that the company had "deliberately steered away from features designed to keep children playing, such as streaks, random rewards, chat messages, loot boxes or notifications." There is no advertising, he said, and schools pay the same subscription however much students play, "so we have no commercial reason to want children on screen for longer."

The government is drawing up guidelines for how long five- to 16-year-olds should spend on screens. At the committee, early years minister Paul Waugh said: "Gamification isn't the way to learn. That's the propaganda they [EdTech companies] will give you but it is all about driving their screen time and their screen use. So it's profit driven." He said there were ways of making learning fun that did not involve competition, and that EdTech should support teachers, not replace them.

Charlotte Ashton, co-founder of Generation Focus, which campaigns for smartphone-free schools, said parents and teachers are increasingly saying no to ed-tech because "for the vast majority of digital 'learning tools' there's very little evidence they actually improve learning and growing evidence they can be harmful." The verified dispute is about how long children play a popular homework app, a company's planned defaults, and a ministerial critique of gamification, not a ban that has already taken effect.