Education Technology (Part 3 of 4)

Pivoting from anxiety to technology….

Jonathan Haidt tells a damning tale of smartphones, all-pervasive screens, and social media in children’s lives. Starting in the early 2010s, soon after the iPhone debuted, rates of teen loneliness, depression, and anxiety skyrocketed.¹ Technology, he argues, has robbed young people of the fulfilling, embodied, collaborative experiences that help them socialize and develop, both cognitively and emotionally.

Recent research validates Haidt’s conclusions—and not just for children. Technology and loneliness are linked. Technology leads to more time spent alone, with people withdrawing from in-person friendship and community.² The social connection promised by internet media companies has not emerged, but has led to isolation wherever Wi-Fi is available.

Haidt links teenage anxiety to technology, but technology in education has apparently escaped his notice. Though he has called for a ban on smartphones in school, he has overlooked the ways in which education is now saturated with and mediated by tech. My (perhaps unpopular) perspective is that technology in education is as harmful to children’s learning as widespread social media and smartphone usage is to their social-emotional well-being.

A Screen is a Screen

Education technology may not affect social development in the intense way that unchecked smartphone use has, but its prevalence in classrooms has grown over the last two decades through computers, tablets, whiteboards, Learning Management Systems (LMS), adaptive learning platforms, and subject-specific video-based content. In 2020, the global EdTech market was worth $89.49 billion; it was projected to grow at an annual growth rate of 19.9% from 2021 to 2028.³

The screen has become the interface for all academic work. Students use a computer to write an essay, visit websites, use an online calculator, meet a teacher, tutor, or study partner over Zoom, use a shared whiteboard or Google Doc, conduct research, and receive and submit materials sent through school portals. The basic unit of learning for the past hundreds of years — the book — is disappearing.

Nor is it only more screens in school. In 2024, the SAT went fully digital, with shorter reading comprehension passages and an integrated online calculator. The test is also 25% shorter than the old-fashioned pencil-and-paper version. As of this spring, the ACT has followed suit with its own modified, shorter online option.

Why is this Bad? Aren’t Computers the Future?

Yes, computing is the future and computers can do wonderful and useful things. Digital literacy is necessary, though I feel a core part of internet training should be teaching kids how to spot scams, fraud, lies, and misinformation, and to understand how tech companies use our “free” digital accounts against us by selling our personal data. But putting cynicism aside, I question the educational value of all this technology, especially for our youngest, whose developing brains need to be treated carefully. Do kindergarteners really need iPads?

In thinking about technology in my own life, I always come to the same conclusion: as much as it can help me achieve some goals faster, it’s also a persistent source of distraction or frustration when it glitches or breaks, when it draws me into content not of my choosing, when I feel overwhelmed by the demands of communicating in multiple ways (phone, text, email, videoconference), or when I let it entertain me at the expense of doing more focused work. I wonder how beneficial all the computing power at my fingertips really is—and I don’t currently use AI or ChatGPT, nor do I spend much time at all on social media.

I have two elementary-school-aged children, and I see how they change as soon as a smartphone, computer, or television appears in front of them. They disappear. Whatever liveliness they exhibited before encountering technology goes dormant. Their bodies go limp as they are sucked into the screen. But when my wife and I manage to wrestle them away from the screens, they become lively again, creative, playful, and hands-on. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. Technology changes them. They become passive observers, no longer in control of their experience.

Technology Does not Necessarily Foster Brain Development

Technology in education may not lead to poor self-image, bullying, or social anxiety, but it is pernicious in a different way: it places students into a passive position and makes them think learning is best when done quickly. But by privileging speed over methodology, computer interfaces turn thinking into clicking. They turn interaction into distraction.

Learning is a slow process. It requires repetition and consistent engagement. It is through the slow pace of learning that our brains integrate information, associating content with other content, like two pieces of velcro. The brain needs time to strengthen new synaptic connections, prune old ones, and build long-lasting neural networks. This does not happen quickly. Recent studies have proven how slowly cognition occurs: “…at a fixed, excruciatingly slow speed of 10 bits per second—[humans] remember, make decisions and imagine things…” According to neuroscientist Markus Meister, brain speed is “ridiculously slower than any of the devices we interact with.”⁴ As David Epstein writes in Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, “…learning itself is best done slowly to accumulate lasting knowledge, even when that means performing poorly on tests of immediate progress. That is, the most effective learning looks inefficient; it looks like falling behind.”⁵

Consider how you would strengthen your bicep muscle. You couldn’t go to the gym for one day and expect to look like Mr. Universe. It takes many repetitions, slowly increasing the weight over months of working out to make a show-off muscle. You could push a button on a machine that would lift 1,000 pounds, but it wouldn’t help your bicep. So it is with the brain. Though perhaps enjoyable and encouraging to see the result, pushing buttons on computers just doesn’t fire as many neurons.

Picking up on Haidt’s metaphor of “stress wood,” in which wind helps young trees develop root systems, I would also point out that old-growth forests — trees that have grown slowly over many years — end up with denser wood grain (and are therefore stronger) than trees that have been cultivated to grow rapidly.

EdTech Has not Led to Score Improvement

If we were to accede to the supposed necessity of classroom technology, one would expect students to be getting smarter faster, right? Logic would dictate that EdTech is driving improved scores, which is justifying further investment in transformative products. The problem is: it’s not. In fact, technology itself might be interfering with the way students learn best.

Recent nationwide testing shows how poorly 4th and 8th graders are doing. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam results, often called the “nation’s report card,” recently revealed some of the lowest levels of math and reading achievement in decades.⁶ The reasons for these declines are multifactorial, and it doesn’t seem that the $122 billion in federal funding from the 2021 American Rescue Plan is making much of a difference. During COVID-19, Zoom instruction and other forms of educational technology were hailed as lifelines, but as you can see from the chart below, they haven’t led to improved outcomes—though I suppose you could argue that they may have prevented scores from getting even worse.⁷

However, following the trend line for 4th and 8th graders back to the year 2000 reveals that scores were steadily improving until 2013, at which point reading and math scores began to fall. Clearly, it’s not just the pandemic that has led to poorer results, though the rate of decline increases between 2019 and 2024.⁸

I’m not laying the blame for this decline all at EdTech’s feet. Schools are chronically underfunded, teachers are underpaid, and there’s a nationwide “teacher shortage” that predates COVID-19 and continues in its wake.⁹ Also, education policy can shift wildly, at times promoting “teaching to the test” and, at others, scrapping testing mandates. But clearly, the way we instruct or assess students is not leading to improved outcomes. Whatever the promise of EdTech, it has not fulfilled it.

Technology is also Hurting Adult Cognition

And it’s not just children whose knowledge and comprehension are suffering. Many adults are no better at reading or math than 5th graders! According to the decennial study from the Organization For Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a growing number of adults in rich countries fail to meet standards in literacy and numeracy. The main driver of this decline is that adults “are now getting less practice than they used to at reading long and complex texts.”¹⁰ To put it another way: too much time tweeting and not enough time reading books.

The term of art for the phenomenon of consuming senseless online content is “brain rot.” If the decline in adult cognitive ability is because of the way technology alters adult behavior, then it’s not so difficult to imagine it interfering with children’s brains, too. After all, the data tracking adult cognitive decline correlate with Haidt’s conclusions about smartphones and teen mental health from roughly the same period. The negative effects of screen time for adults mirror the decline in student scores. Brain rot clearly affects the old and the young.

All of these data are certainly troubling enough that more research must be done into technology’s role in making adults (and potentially students) dumber. For starters, we should cut back on EdTech in classrooms and promote a slow engagement with learning that actually matches the brain’s natural speed of cognition. Like old-growth forests, students who grow slowly end up stronger.

1. Haidt, The Anxious Generation, 24.

2. “How Tech Created a ‘Recipe for Loneliness,’” The New York Times, accessed November 10, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/technology/personaltech/technology-loneliness.html.

3. “Education Technology,” The International Trade Administration, accessed December 1, 2024, https://www.trade.gov/education-technology.

4. “The Unbelievable Slowness of Thinking,” Scientific American, accessed December 17, 2024, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-human-brain-operates-at-a-stunningly-slow-pace/.

5. David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, (Riverhead Books, 2019), 11.

6. “Reading Scores Fall to New Low on NAEP, Fueled by Declines for Struggling Students,” Education Week, accessed January 29, 2025, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/reading-scores-fall-to-new-low-on-naep-fueled-by-declines-for-struggling-students/2025/01.

7. #NatalieWexler has written extensively in her Substack “Minding the Gap” that the NAEP test itself needs reforming: https://nataliewexler.substack.com/p/how-to-improve-the-naep-reading-test?

8. “The Pandemic Is Not the Only Reason U.S. Students Are Losing Ground,” The New York Times, accessed April 7, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/us/low-performing-students-reasons.html.

9. “Today’s teacher shortage is just the tip of the iceberg: Part I,” Economic Policy Institute, accessed January 9, 2025, https://www.epi.org/blog/teacher-shortage-part1/.

10. “Are adults forgetting how to read?,” World Literacy Foundation, accessed December 20, 2024, https://worldliteracyfoundation.org/are-adults-forgetting-how-to-read/.