In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
Mostly posting this because holy shit what a jump to blame schools distributing laptops being the cause and not psychologically addictive social media algorithms having a total domination of their attention
Definitely nothing to do with the fact that schools giving out laptops disproportionately benefits less wealthier families
Correct, and an actual study can isolate variables and when you do that, tech is usually a boon. It’s especially easy to do with tech, but long term studies are still difficult because of history effects and imperfect control groups.
I can believe Gen Z is doing worse, but almost every study I’ve been around in education has found Socioeconomic Status to be the strongest factor (by far) and given Gen Z and Alpha are raised by the first generations to have economic decline, it stands to reason that’s probably the main factor here.
School interventions do help to some degree to mitigate SES, it’s just hard when it’s this bad for this long. We’re talking decades of decline.
Right, like I’ve seen parents shove a tablet or a phone in their toddlers hands before they learn how to walk properly, and they keep scrolling mind numbing short form slop on it, and they want to talk about school laptops lol
it’s like blaming the obesity epidemic on plates…
You actually can influence how full a person feels after a set amount of food based on how big or small the plate is on which the food was served.
The addictive qualities of ultra processed foods at the same time as the diminishing nutrition of processed and unprocessed foods alike is obviously so much more of a contributing factor, but isn’t it nuts that plates can also have a measurable effect?
when it’s microplastics!
I have a degree in computer engineering. I have been coding since the 80’s.
I learn better with pencil and paper. Most people do. Schools need to go back to that. Have computer labs but don’t do everything on computers all damn day.
I’m 23 and got a CS degree last year. When I was in highschool my CS teacher had us writing Java on paper with pencil. At the time I thought it was the stupidest thing but in hindsight there definitely are certain benefits to it. The best CS professor I had in college was also having us do certain things with pencil and paper and he strictly forbid it being done any other way.
Educational studies have backed this up. You learn more when writing than typing and by reading print media than digital. The digital tools should still exist but you also need to use the analog ones.
That’s just not true. People don’t learn with pencil or computer better - a single tool does not shape the learning experience. Sure pencil has positive effects stimulating muscles while learning but it has a billion of negative effects too.
I don’t think it’s tablets and laptops that caused the decline as much as what they grant access to. The conspiratorial side to me is dying to believe that the massive Gen AI push by the government and businesses is not only about the money, but also about producing a dumber generation.
The body is just as much in charge of the brain as the brain is of the body, it’s certainly a combination of factors including how we are using our bodies while learning, writing is fundamentally human and intellectual, pushing buttons to type, not so much.
That’s a muddied ground to tread. People who can’t draw can still interpret art, but I tend to agree with you. There’s a lot about how the brain works that we still don’t know
i can’t imagine that forcing kids to go to school during a pandemic where a disease spread whose long-term effects include cognitive impairment had a good impact either
IMO, in the US
- Common core replaced a better curriculum. Courses seem dumbed down and doesn’t really prepare you anymore for college maths
- Grades were extremely inflated during covid because obviously students would not be motivated to study
- Grades are a lot lenient now. Most classes are passing people that would’ve previously been considered a fail
- AI was touted as a replacement for thinking and had repercussions when students started using it to just do all the work
- School is increasingly a for profit system now. Most colleges are increasing tuition without improving classes, and attracting enrollment by touting the hollywood college life experience.
- There’s a lot of negativity in the younger generation, especially as those who see their older siblings fail to find anything in the job market. What’s the point of college if it can’t land you a good job?
Not USAian so can’t comment on 1 and 5.
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And 2. I believe are too recent for this. That’s more of a gen alpha thing, gen z already went through most of school before 2020/2022.
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Directly causes 6.
I believe 3. Is the root of all evil. And no, 5. Does not cause 3., since I went to a public university. In my case, 3. Was influenced by something similar to 5.: the political party in power encouraging their side of culture instead of focusing on education.
- Is not easy to fix though. Low standards create bad students, which lowers the standards even more. Creating a downward spiral that is at a pretty low point now. So low in fact that 4. Happened. If the standards were higher, AI wouldn’t meet the standards, and only students that genuinely put in the effort would pass.
This is not in isolation though. The reason standards started to fall is because higher education became a NEED. As portrayed by the media, if you don’t go for higher education, you will end up in a stagnant job that pays minimum wage. So everyone needed to get higher education, so there was a lot of pressure to let all these new students pass.
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So you’re saying the lockdowns had long term negative effects… Interesting 🤔
Like with most things, there’s always a price to an action
Lockdowns are important to curb infection and protect vulnerable people. Did it have long term negative effects? Yes, that’s inevitable. Could we have handled both the lockdown and post lockdown better? Sure. But protecting people heavily outweighs the consequences.
I feel bad for the girl in the picture. She turns up every time the “technology makes kids dumbfucks” argument surfaces. Feel like ive seen her about 20 times in the last year.
Imagine being the face of that.
LOL what on earth if FORTUNE of all places doing publishing an article on this?
Unrelated but I am pretty annoyed articles can refer to age groups as “gen z” or “millenial.”
It’s not some universally agreed number. They could just say “kids aged 12-24.” It’s more empirical.
For sure. I love my kids, he’s 15. He scores above average in the state/national tests (map ect). He can tell me the date, when the first bomb dropped in fallou 4, but has no fucking idea when the declaration of independence was signed, can’t figure out how to cook anything from a box, can’t name 10 countries in the world, and had zero idea how to do anything for himself.
The sad thing is I taught for 20 years in elementary level. All the have us teach is tests, ELA, Math, fuck science,art, geography,history. These kids are literally functionally mentally handicapped because they just want higher and higher test scores to jerk off to at the cost of kids who are functional.
Kids these days
and welcome to 'short attention span theater"
There’s no scientific proof of “shortened attention spans”.
pay attention… https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11236742/
Maybe it is you who should be paying attention:
- n=48 study
- Immediately loaded in abstract “the pervasive nature of short-form video”, “short video addiction”
- based of
- even with all these flaws it’s only p = 0.026 that’s just 2.6% increase. With n of 48 that’s laugh
This is quack science. Absolute rubbish to grift of rage bait and y’all are falling for this.
Reality is this is incredibly hard to study and we don’t even have a thing as “attention span” properly defined to even perform effective studies.
Again, there’s no credible evidence that short form videos are impacting our “attention spans” whatever the fuck that even means. What are you a vacuum robot hunting for dust balls? For what the attention is spanning for? That’s not how humans work.
You can’t make such a statement about a whole generation without referring to a large cohort study.
And who designed the software and tools leading to this?
Google.
Which is run by their parents’ generation
It’s run by techbros who live in a different reality then the rest of us.
Reminds me of an old Elvis Costello lyric…“Now you can’t afford to fake all the drugs your parents used to take, because of their mistakes you’d better be wide awake”.
Closed systems are tough to grasp and swallow, huh?
