Jared Cooney Horvath asserts that the widespread integration of screens and digital tools in schools risks damaging attention, memory, and understanding, calling for urgent reevaluation amid concerns over declining student achievement.
Jared Cooney Horvath is pressing a warning he says schools have ignored for too long: the spread of classroom technology may be damaging how children learn. The neuroscientist and former teacher, who sets out his case in “The Digital Delusion”, argues that the shift towards screens and software in lessons is not simply a matter of modern teaching methods, but a deeper threat to attention, memory and long-term understanding.
Horvath links the rise of edtech to falling achievement and weakening cognitive outcomes, pointing to international test data and a wider decline in performance since the early 2000s. He says the change accelerated when schools were forced online during the pandemic and, in many cases, never fully reversed course. In the United States, he says one-to-one laptop schemes are now widespread, while in Britain the Covid era also entrenched digital habits that have proved hard to unwind.
His criticism has gained traction as governments and parents have grown more sceptical of mobile phones and social media in schools. In January, Horvath told a US Senate committee that the rapid expansion of educational technology was taking place with too little independent evidence, and too few safeguards around privacy and child development. He has also previously argued, in writing for Tes, that OECD research found no meaningful gains in maths, reading or science from heavy investment in school computers.
Not everyone in the field agrees with his more sweeping conclusions. Rose Luckin of University College London says much edtech has been sold on promise rather than proof, but argues that moderate use of devices can be associated with better results than no use at all. Dylan Wiliam, also of UCL, says the evidence does not support simple claims that technology helps or harms learning in every case. His view is that the real question is when edtech works, and for whom. Daisy Christodoulou, education director at No More Marking, says the debate has prompted a useful correction, even if she remains more open than Horvath to the role of technology and artificial intelligence in older pupils’ learning.
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