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
As a society, we chose to only teach ONE FUCKING GENERATION how to use technology and then went "well, young people 'just understand' technology, we don't need to teach it anymore" and then somehow decided to just give all the kids a fucking tablet or laptop and assume they would LEARN THROUGH OSMOSIS I GUESS? Meanwhile we are defunding education across the country to absolutely shameful lows. (yes, I'm focused on the USA - I doubt "Cooney Horvath" is basing this broad generalization meant to scare people into buying his books on a study of ALL CHILDREN ALL OVER THE WORLD) AND THEN we let tech-bro-oligarchs decide EVERYTHING related to tech for two entire fucking decades and are just SHOCKED they did the thing that was best for profits, not the children (whose lives it was actively ruining for profit).
BUT YES, JARED HORNY CORVATH, your astute observations PROVE it was the fault of the LAPTOP that the next generations are "INHERANTLY DUMBER" (feels like a dog whistle, I dunno for what - but it's trying to justify something, I can feel it in my bones).
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.
That poor child in the stock photo getting shown for an article on how children are getting dumber...
That being said, the reason why children are getting 'dumber' is probably because a) education is getting less money every year b) social media is destroying their attention span c) intelligence isn't valued enough by society
At no point is getting a notebook part of the problem. Young people need to learn how to use technology.
Students aren't being disadvantaged by the availability or even the reliance on technology.
They're being disadvantaged by not being taught (or in most cases even allowed) to interact with said technology in challenging and enlightening ways.
Would expect nothing better than such jumping to shallow conclusions from the chronically out of touch rag Fortune, though.
I honestly blame the software we use. It's made to be profitable, not to educate. Every fucking article is full of bullshit "click here!" for profit.
Where is the global and universal app to learn fucking everything? That teaches you, lets you read unlimited textbooks (oh piracy!) or science papers, quizzes you, scores you, lets you compete with others, gives you a diploma that is worth something?
Why do we expect an internet that has been captured by capitalism and is algorithmically tuned to maximize profit and brainwashing to be good for intelligence? That is what advertising is brainwashing, and it ru(i)ns everything.
PS: Of course, I have no idea how good online learning resources of schools actually are. I'm just going to assume they are abyssal. Because why wouldn't they be terrible.
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.
As the great Douglas Adams once wrote: "This has generally been considered a bad idea."
2002 though. I sympathize. The internet was different and more human. He must've thought they were giving kids freedom to access NatGeo and Wikipedia.
...We were more optimistic about the internet then.
...But they failed to take into account that they were releasing children into an unregulated world of predatory marketer barons making millions hand-over-fist by hijacking attention.
So the interesting line for me, that many comments obviously didn't read, is:
Horvath noted not only dipping test scores, but also a stark correlation in scores and time spent on computers in school
So there clearly is something up with computers in school. But this doesn't exclude the possibility that the kids who are getting their brains fucked by addictive algorithms are then more likely to fuck about on school computers. This line:
Horvath blamed this tendency to get off-track as a key contributor to technology hindering learning.
Suggests it's not "tech" but "distractions enabled by tech" which is having the effect, i.e. if school laptops and tablets were locked down you wouldn't see as much of an effect.
I make a comment saying the title here, like a week ago, and its controversial.
I say 'if you don't understand this that's because you're not familiar with current stats and papers'.
Look.
Everybody is scrambling to actually explain the causal mechanism(s).
... The observed effect though, is so broad and obvious and undeniable, that that's why everyone is scrambling to try and explain it.
Personally, my inclination is that for-profit, advertisement-oriented social media apps are the 'cigarettes' of the digital age... because they are literally precision designed to hijack your attention, cause addiction via hijacking your dopamine/reward neurochemistry, prey on and exploit all your innate/subconscious insecurities, and they reward and amplify convenience, outrage and excess.
But that's just a hypothesis. Again, what's undeniable is that... we have, broadly, peaked.
Unless of course we can figure out how to reverse that, and then actually implement whatever needs to be done, to actually reverse it.
Nothing in USA rewards intelligence. Not education system, not employers, not government. Why develop a skill that isn't in demand? Would you want to develop medieval brickmaking just because some researcher is measuring for it?
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.
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.
They say things like this about every generation. Boomer kids had their brains rotted by TV and rock’n’roll. GenX couldn’t do long division because of calculators. Millennials lost the ability to communicate in complete sentences because of mobile phone texting. In the bronze age, writing totally destroyed the youth’s ability to memorise epic poetry. And so on.
It sounds like it's false, but even if it were true, companies like Fortune are working hard to make it true. They want suckers who don't think, who don't remember, who can perform high level labor at almost no cost, so the rich can get richer.
The dark ages didn't begin because the library of Alexandria fell, but because it was allowed to fall.
This is fundamentally our fault
IMO, in the US
You gave a bunch of kids systems they're completely locked out of modifying and garden walled to shit and then act shocked when they learn nothing from them.
Jesus
LOL what on earth if FORTUNE of all places doing publishing an article on this?
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
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.
My partner went back to school. The young person sitting next to him was snapping pictures of slides with her phone during lecture.
That feels like highlighting the entire chapter of assigned reading in pink.
Man I hate such and such generation is such. if technology is dumbing the kids its also dumbing the adults. which it is. ironically its not making a bunch of high paying jobs for people who get elementary logic.
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.
The problem isn't "Tech" or "Laptops" or even "Tablets" ; but the addictive nonsense so-called "Tech-companies" spend all their efforts designing instead of trying to solve any actual problems...
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