“my name is jared coney horvath. i am a former university professor who held the highest academic titles, and i have since become a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in human learning. i have never received, nor will i ever receive, funding from any source whatsoever.
one of the unfortunate realities our generation must confront is that children today are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. historically, each generation has surpassed the one before it. that is precisely what we want - for our children to be smarter than us.
the main reason for this was school, where each generation spent more time developing its cognitive abilities. we relied on education to strengthen these abilities, until generation z, the demographic group born roughly between 1997 and 2012, came along.
its defining characteristic is that it is a generation of digital natives, raised in the age of the internet, smartphones, and social media. they have never known a world without digital technology.
this is the first generation in modern history to fail to surpass the previous generation on almost every cognitive measure - memory, literacy, arithmetic, executive function, and overall iq - despite spending more time in school than previous generations.
what happened around 2010, when education and cognitive development became disconnected? it could not be the schools themselves, as schools appear to have remained largely similar. nor could it be biological factors, as there has not been enough time for significant changes to occur. the answer appears to lie in the tools used within schools to guide the learning process.
looking at data from 80 countries, we find that 11 have adopted digital technology extensively in schools, resulting in a significant decline in performance.
students who use computers for approximately five hours a day at school for learning purposes score more than two-thirds of a standard deviation lower than students who rarely or never use technology at school.
this applies across all 80 countries. in the united states, there is a program called the national assessment of educational progress (naep). comparing naep data from any state before and after the extensive adoption of technology, we find a clear difference. the data initially stabilizes for a period, then begins to decline.
what we really want to understand is why. to determine the reasons, we need academic research, evidence of the underlying mechanisms, and an explanation for what we are seeing. fortunately, we have academic research dating back to 1962 showing essentially the same result over six decades - when technology enters education, learning declines.
in fact, children using computers are often simply skimming. so, instead of determining what we want for our children and directing education toward those goals, we are redefining education to better suit the device.
this is not progress; rather, it is a surrender to reality. even in schools, screen size does not matter, whether it is a phone or a laptop. it doesn’t matter who purchased it, whether it is school-approved, or whether it carries an “education” label. all of this can harm learning and negatively affect our children’s cognitive development at a time when we need them to be smarter than us.
we must stop relying entirely on machines. we need to return to traditional education, the traditional blackboard, and give the teacher a greater role in the educational process.”