Most parents of school-age kids have spent the past few years worrying about cell phones, social media and, lately, AI. Jared Cooney Horvath wants them to look just as hard at their school-issued laptops.
Horvath is a neuroscientist, educator and author of “The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning — And How to Help Them Thrive Again.” The book argues that the devices and learning apps now standard in American classrooms are hurting academic achievement, not helping it.
Horvath will be in the area Nov. 16-17 for an event co-sponsored by Lex Kids be Kids, a local group that advocates for phone-free childhood. LexObserver editor Lauren Feeney spoke with Horvath ahead of his visit. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I think a lot of parents are really concerned about their kids’ use of social media and AI, but less focused on the apps and devices used in the classroom — perhaps because it feels like it’s sanctioned by your kids’ school and teacher, so it must be okay. But your book argues that almost any technology used in the classroom is detrimental to our kids’ learning. You refer to these tools as “ed tech” — what do you mean by that, and how widespread is it?
Ed tech is broadly defined as any student-facing, internet-connected hardware or software. So, it’s not a teacher standing at the front of the room showing a PowerPoint presentation. It’s basically the computers kids are given in schools with the software they’re given to train in math, reading — all that stuff. We’re at the stage now where over 25% of kids in the US will use a computer for over four hours every single day at school for learning and training. Over 90% of school districts now have one-to-one programs that give kids laptops.
There are some ed tech programs that people have probably heard of. i-Ready, which has like 13 million kids using it, or IXL for math. The problem is the data shows they don’t really work. The leading pediatrics institute recommends limiting screen time for your child’s health. It’s funny how that goes by the wayside when you stamp the word “educational” on it. Now, all of a sudden four hours a day is fine. We’re ceding the teaching and learning process to tech, and it’s just not working as well as when we were teaching and learning with each other.
You mentioned IXL, which I remember my kids using in elementary school here in Lexington. Another one that they use all the time is called Gimkit — it makes a game out of things like vocab words that you need to memorize. What do you think of those gamified apps that are intended to make learning a little more fun?
Gamification has very rarely been an effective strategy. And the reason for it is human beings will only learn those things which they are attending to. Dan Willingham puts it best. He says, “Memory is the residue of thought.” What are you thinking about? That’s what you’re learning.
Games force you to focus on the mechanics of the game. Can I get the high score? Am I on the leaderboard? If you’re playing Duolingo, can I get the new outfit for my owl? Can I get another diamond? All of that is great for engagement, but you’re engaging with the wrong material. What you’re not focusing on is the content being taught. So oddly enough, the more gamified learning becomes, the more the kids tend to do it, but the more learning tends to go down because they’re learning the wrong stuff.
There was a really interesting blog post maybe a year ago by a woman named Daisy Christodoulou out of the UK titled “Why education can never be fun.” And the argument was that, kind of like working out, enjoyment is something that comes after. But if you try to embed the fun into the learning, by and large it just derails the learning.
Like, most kids don’t exactly think it’s fun practicing the violin, but it’s extremely satisfying when you get up there on stage and you play perfectly.
Exactly. You can’t get to that outcome without going through the journey, and the more we try and futz with the journey through ed tech and all these other mechanisms, we’re making the journey worse, and we’re making the destination worse. Kids are less happy with school now than they’ve ever been. They’re not really enjoying all of this stuff. And the results are hands-down the worst they’ve ever been. Well, not ever been — but the worst in this century.
Beyond gamification, what are some other differences between learning from a screen and learning from a human being, on a psychological level?
As human beings, we’ve evolved biological mechanisms that help us learn from other human beings. One of the primary drivers of learning has always been what’s called affective empathy. Basically, students and teachers — their biology can start to resonate. And in that moment, learning soars, because the kid is no longer learning from the teacher; the kid is thinking like the teacher. And now we’re making all these cognitive moves together.
Unfortunately, you cannot empathize with the screen. If there’s no biology involved, there will be no resonance. By all means, your kids might love the computer, but they’re never going to empathize with it. It’s never going to boost their learning because that mechanism simply ain’t there. Learning is a social endeavor. Always has been. That’s the point of all of this.
I was struck by the point that you make in the book about how much time kids spend off task when learning on screens.
A kid will be off task 24 to 38 minutes of every single hour if they have a screen, even when the teacher is present in the classroom. So if you want to halve the amount of time kids are learning in school, give them a computer.
Your kids, from age 8 to 18, will use computers for learning about 400 hours per school year. They will use the exact same machine to passively consume rapidly switching media content for over 2,500 hours every single year.
We’ve trained ourselves, just like Pavlov’s dog — when I see a screen, I’m gonna open 10 tabs, I’m gonna watch a video and read an article at the same time. Unfortunately, that is horrible for learning.
Can you talk about the data you cite from IQ and PISA tests that shows scores are on the decline?
You name it, basically that test has gone down. Tests of literacy, tests of numeracy. PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS, that’s NAEP here in the US, general IQ testing. All of these tests are going down around the world. It is wickedly difficult to find any individual measure on which Gen Alpha is now outperforming everyone else. The only one I’ve seen them do better on than everyone else is rapid visual scene processing, which basically means they can play video games faster than anyone else. Not better, just faster.
A lot of people tied a lot of these things to COVID, but unfortunately, no — they are tied to when each country or system heavily adopts tech. A lot of this predates COVID significantly. It’s not rural kids versus city kids. It’s not minority kids versus majority kids. By all means, these things have an impact on performance — low socioeconomic status kids typically underperform high socioeconomic status kids. But when you layer in the tech element, you see more tech use equals worse scores across the board.
What do you say to parents who worry that if their kids don’t learn how to use all this new technology, and particularly AI, then they’ll be left behind?
The data is 100% the opposite. The data is very clear that the more we use tech in schools, the less digitally literate your kids are becoming. Gen Z is less digitally literate than millennials. Gen Alpha is less digitally literate than Gen X.
There was a survey done by College Board last year with 800-plus hiring managers. And one of the questions was, do you think today’s graduates are less prepared for work than previous generations? And 80% of hiring managers said, yes, they’re less prepared. Everyone assumed they’d say they’re less prepared because they don’t know how to use tech. But when they drilled down, they’re saying no, they’re less prepared because that’s all they know how to do.
Digital literacy is very different than digital use. Your kids know how to use computers. You don’t need to worry about that. What we now need to do is imbue them with the deep knowledge and understanding of the world that gives them a reason to use these tools. None of that comes from the technology itself. It comes from a general K through 12 education. So believe it or not, even workplaces are now saying stop teaching tech. Stop giving your kids tech. Stop making tech the focus of education. Go back to teaching kids stuff again.