About a third of K-12 students have already returned to class amid a fourth COVID-19 wave. While, earlier this year, analysts had predicted a very optimistic back-to-school (BTS) season for retailers and brands, not all is lost: Many parents still want to make school-related firsts and rites of passage as “normal” as possible for their children.

With many screen-time rules in abeyance and distance learning replacing in-person school, teens and younger school kids are reaping the benefits but also seeing the limitations of what digital technology can do for them.

The FCC’s $7.17 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund, which was released in July to fund the purchase of notebooks, tablets, and network connectivity for schools and libraries, could buoy demand for laptops and Chromebooks into the next year. What’s next?

Why it could succeed: Night School Studio meshes well with Netflix’s prior gaming experiments, as it tends to lean toward storyline-based gameplay as opposed to games that rely on technical skill. The studio’s most popular game, Oxenfree, is a choose-your-own-adventure game where players’ dialogue choices affect the story.

How the pandemic changed back-to-school shopping

Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Episerver. Gartner. GlobalWebIndex. Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK). Lotame. Partnerize. Rakuten Advertising.

For example, near the end of Q3 2021, investors poured $13 million into pediatric telemental health startups like DotCom Therapy, which is teaming up with in-school telehealth providers to make therapy services accessible for kids where they’re spending the most time: school.

Catie holds a BS in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Henry Tam is SVP, global sales and partnerships at BERA, a predictive brand tech platform. Prior to BERA, Henry spent six years at Neustar MarketShare leading the growth of major accounts across marketing analytics services for clients including Capital One, Charles Schwab, Disney, Warner Media, Domino’s, and Yum!

High school and middle school students, meanwhile, will see more modest increases in spending, at 4% and 3%, respectively. The shift toward online shopping over the past year will continue to push back-to-school sales online.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health say technical factors like increased awareness of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), increased screening, and better diagnostic services could be contributing to the rise in pediatric cases.

Back-to-school spending will elevate sales in the short term: After more than a year of remote learning, many students will return to school this fall—and retailers can expect a boom in volume as consumers shop for school supplies and clothing in the coming weeks and months: US retail back-to-school sales are expected to reenter positive growth this year, hitting $95.83 billion, per eMarketer forecasts

After a year spent in Zoom classrooms, many students are headed for physical schools this fall, which means parents are headed for back-to-school shopping. In 2021, the majority of US back-to-school digital shoppers will make use of Amazon and big-box retail websites, and only 27% will shop on office supply sites. More like this:.

That shift is going to accelerate because the underlying ecosystem of TV is changing, and it's changing so fast that even if you wanted to apply the old-school playbooks, you can't. If you want to find your audience, it’s going to be cross-platform. How far are we from losing the distinction between TV and digital TV and video? This year, we've almost given up in terms of trying to separate the two.

Suzy earned her MBA at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and prior to that was an in-house public relations executive for 5 years.

In 2020, most schools transitioned to remote learning because of the pandemic, but this year, most schools are expected to open up—heralding an uptick in back-to-school sales in categories like apparel and electronics and helping elevate issuer volume. Issuers could develop rewards related to back-to-school shopping that would also help maximize revenue potential.