Scientist Warns: Too Much Screen Time in Schools Is Hurting Kids' Brains

A brain scientist named Jared Cooney Horvath says that using too many screens and digital tools in schools is hurting how kids learn. Horvath, who is also a former teacher, has spent more than 15 years studying the way people learn. He believes that children today are less capable thinkers than children were a generation ago. He shares these ideas in his new book, called The Digital Delusion.

Horvath points to test scores as proof that something has gone wrong. He says that starting around the year 2000, IQ scores in Western countries began to drop — even as kids were spending more time in school. Scores on international tests also started to fall. Horvath blames the fast growth of educational technology, which is often called 'edtech,' for this decline.

Edtech is a huge business. In the United Kingdom, the edtech market brings in about £6.5 billion every year. In the United States, where Horvath lives, it is worth around $400 billion. Digital tools and computers are now used in almost every part of the school day.

Horvath says that laptops really took off in U.S. schools between 2010 and 2012. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, nearly every school switched to digital learning very quickly. That made sense at the time, he says, because schools needed to keep teaching somehow. But when the pandemic ended, most schools kept using all those digital tools instead of going back to older methods.

One study Horvath points to is called the Programme for International Student Assessment, or Pisa. It tests 15-year-olds in dozens of countries every three years. The Pisa survey found that students who used computers for more than six hours a day at school scored 66 points lower than students who did not use computers at all. 'The more time students spent on screens at school, the further their scores fell,' Horvath said.

Not everyone agrees with Horvath's conclusions, though. Rose Luckin is a professor at UCL in London and an expert on technology in education. She says Horvath is right that a lot of edtech was sold to schools based on promises, not real proof. But she also says the Pisa data shows that students who use devices a moderate amount actually do better than those who use none at all.

Daisy Christodoulou works at an edtech company called No More Marking. She agrees that society has been too relaxed about the effects of new technology on students. She is a little more hopeful than Horvath about what technology could do for older students, and notes that screens have had less of an impact in English classrooms than in American ones.

Dylan Wiliam is a professor at UCL who studies how students are assessed. He says that while technology might be hurting student achievement, the studies we have so far cannot prove that screens are the direct cause. He also points out that many well-designed studies show technology can actually help students learn. His view is that experts need to figure out exactly when and how technology helps kids learn best.