The mass rollout of laptops in schools since 2012 has devastated the educational outcomes for the bottom 50% of students. While high-performing students can manage the distraction, those with weaker executive function cannot, leading to an overall decline in national test scores. The investment in EdTech has had a net negative effect.
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Young people's familiarity with entertainment tech like YouTube doesn't mean they know how to use technology for learning. This misconception leads educators to assume digital skills that students don't possess, creating significant problems when tech is introduced into the classroom.
Using generative AI to produce work bypasses the reflection and effort required to build strong knowledge networks. This outsourcing of thinking leads to poor retention and a diminished ability to evaluate the quality of AI-generated output, mirroring historical data on how calculators impacted math skills.
Silicon Valley leaders often send their children to tech-free schools and make nannies sign no-phone contracts. This hypocrisy reveals their deep understanding of the addictive and harmful nature of the very products they design and market to the public's children, serving as the ultimate proof of the danger.
Boys addicted to devices are being rewired for constant action-reaction dopamine hits. In a low-stimulus environment like a classroom, they may subconsciously create conflict or act out simply to generate a reaction, fulfilling their brain's conditioned need for immediate feedback, making them incredibly difficult to manage.
The sharp rise in teens feeling their lives are useless correlates directly with the smartphone era. Technology pulls them from productive activities into passive consumption, preventing the development of skills and a sense of purpose derived from contribution.
A randomized controlled trial by Anthropic revealed a significant negative impact on skill acquisition for junior coders who relied on AI assistance. Those who used AI scored nearly two letter grades lower on a follow-up quiz, highlighting the risk of AI as a cognitive crutch rather than a learning tool.
Schooling has become a victim of Goodhart's Law. When a measure (grades, test scores) becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Students become experts at 'doing school' — maximizing the signal — which is a separate skill from the actual creative and intellectual capabilities the system is supposed to foster.
AI accelerates learning for motivated students but enables disengaged ones to avoid it entirely. This dichotomy makes fostering genuine student engagement the single most critical challenge for educators today, as it is the linchpin determining whether AI is a revolutionary tool or a disastrous crutch.
While cheating is a concern, a more insidious danger is students using AI to bypass deep cognitive engagement. They can produce correct answers without retaining knowledge, creating a cumulative learning deficit that is difficult to detect and remedy.
While the educational gap between poor and middle-class students is significant, the chasm between middle-class and wealthy students is more than twice as large, as measured by SAT scores. This disparity is driven by massive private school spending and endowments, creating an extreme advantage for the affluent.
