‘Our children are less cognitively capable,’ says neuroscientist who wants to cut screen use in schools

In the wake of global campaigns for smartphone bans in schools and social media restrictions for under-16s, the neuroscientist wants to raise the alarm about educational technology in classrooms. A former teacher, Horvath believes the use of screens and digital tools in schools is undermining how children learn and develop. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last.

Until now.” Starting around the year 2000, something changed. Scores in international tests started to drop. In the US, Horvath says it is a $400bn (£295bn) mega-industry, woven into every aspect of schooling.

It’s about reducing them as much as possible for academic learning as well if we want our kids to have deep transferrable knowledge in our heads.” The uptake of laptops in schools – especially in the US where he lives – began in earnest in 2010-12, Horvath said. Better to have something than nothing. They just stayed digital.” In the US 88% of school districts now had one-to-one computers, he said.

In the UK, Covid had a similar impact. Horvath has been studying how people learn for over 15 years and has concluded that “tech is not a very good tool for it”. He cites recent scores from the programme for international student assessment (Pisa) which takes place every three years and tracks the academic performance of 15-year-olds across dozens of countries.

In 2012, 2015 and 2018, Pisa asked students how much time they spent using digital devices during a typical school day. Rose Luckin is an emerita professor of learner-centred design at the UCL Knowledge Lab in London and a recognised expert on AI in education. We did not have a huge amount of evidence.

But that does not mean that all educational technology is problematic. It’s just that the heaviest daily use is the worst.” Daisy Christodoulou, the director of education at No More Marking, an educational technology startup, agrees that society has been a “bit blase” about the impact of a lot of these new technologies. But I would probably be a little bit more optimistic [than Horvath] about the potential for technology and AI in upper secondary,” she said.