Edtech is booming, but so is 'brain rot'

"Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age," said neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath in testimony to the U.S. Senate on the impact of educational technology. IQs are down because schools have gotten worse at cultivating"values, habits and cognitive skills," writes Horvath, author of The Digital Delusion.

IQ, which measures the ability to learn in school, used to correlate closely with years of schooling, Horvath writes. Not any more. "Despite spending more time in school than any generation before, Gen-Z is losing school-ability."

Trying to make learning easier will backfire, he warns. "The more students rely on easy, supportive digital tools, the less friction they encounter and the less mental effort they must exert. But friction is not a flaw of learning: it is learning."

"Edtech companies tout huge learning gains," but researchers have found "technology rarely boosts learning in schools -- and often impairs it, editorializes The Economist.

Around the world, in-school computer use is up and test scores are down, the story notes. "Back in 2013, Bill Gates remarked that it would take a decade to know whether education technology really worked," The Economist concludes. "More than ten years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the answer is increasingly clear."

It's not yet clear whether artificial intelligence will boost learning or brain rot, write Daniel Buck and Anna Low. Optimists envision every child getting a personalized AI tutor. Pessimists it will be "a glorified machine widely used for cheating and one that minimizes thinking and thereby leads to cognitive atrophy."

A new OECD report is not very encouraging.

Using "generative AI can improve student performance on practice problems, final exams, and essays" without improving learning, they write. "In one study, ChatGPT-supported students boosted their writing scores compared to a control group. But they did less thinking about their writing. "Using AI for writing may have created a better final product, but it didn’t make students any better writers," write Buck and Low. And it may have made them more reliant on the technology.

In another study, "access to generative AI improved math performance during practice by 48 percent, but once those supports were removed and students took exams in a closed-book environment, students performed 17 percent worse than students who studied with just a textbook," they write.

Schools have to decide how to teach the TikTok Generation, writes Brandon L. Wright. "Do we struggle against the current and try to restore traditional expectations — whole texts, sustained problem-solving, teacher-led discussion and writing, tech kept genuinely supplementary — even though that kind of learning is slower, harder, and increasingly out of sync with students’ attention spans and preferences?" Or should schools "meet students where they are?"

Wright doubts the middle path is doable. "The digital products competing for students’ attention are engineered to be irresistible and endlessly adaptive, while serious learning is, by design, effortful." Screens will win, he writes. "Students prefer it, it simplifies classroom management, and even well-intentioned teachers get nudged toward whatever produces quick compliance and measurable learning."

He fears teachers will lose the skill of low-tech teaching. "Educators get less practiced at leading students through sustained discussion and the kind of close, extended work with texts and writing that traditional instruction demands. Students get less practiced at the patience and stamina those tasks require."

Wright can envision a tech-enabled future with "micro-learning modules and gamified content delivery" and "auto-graded, platform-based assignments that feel more like entertainment than academic work." But he's not confident that students will be learning.