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.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
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
Correct, and an actual study can isolate variables and when you do that, tech is usually a boon. It’s especially easy to do with tech, but long term studies are still difficult because of history effects and imperfect control groups.
I can believe Gen Z is doing worse, but almost every study I’ve been around in education has found Socioeconomic Status to be the strongest factor (by far) and given Gen Z and Alpha are raised by the first generations to have economic decline, it stands to reason that’s probably the main factor here.
School interventions do help to some degree to mitigate SES, it’s just hard when it’s this bad for this long. We’re talking decades of decline.
Right, like I’ve seen parents shove a tablet or a phone in their toddlers hands before they learn how to walk properly, and they keep scrolling mind numbing short form slop on it, and they want to talk about school laptops lol
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.
Educational studies have backed this up. You learn more when writing than typing and by reading print media than digital. The digital tools should still exist but you also need to use the analog ones.
That’s just not true. People don’t learn with pencil or computer better - a single tool does not shape the learning experience. Sure pencil has positive effects stimulating muscles while learning but it has a billion of negative effects too.
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.
LOL what on earth if FORTUNE of all places doing publishing an article on this?
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.
And who designed the software and tools leading to this?
Google.
Which is run by their parents’ generation
It’s run by techbros who live in a different reality then the rest of us.
and welcome to 'short attention span theater"
There’s no scientific proof of “shortened attention spans”.
pay attention… https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11236742/
Maybe it is you who should be paying attention:
- n=48 study
- Immediately loaded in abstract “the pervasive nature of short-form video”, “short video addiction”
- based of
- even with all these flaws it’s only p = 0.026 that’s just 2.6% increase. With n of 48 that’s laugh
This is quack science. Absolute rubbish to grift of rage bait and y’all are falling for this.
Reality is this is incredibly hard to study and we don’t even have a thing as “attention span” properly defined to even perform effective studies.
Again, there’s no credible evidence that short form videos are impacting our “attention spans” whatever the fuck that even means. What are you a vacuum robot hunting for dust balls? For what the attention is spanning for? That’s not how humans work.
Kids these days
You can’t make such a statement about a whole generation without referring to a large cohort study.
Closed systems are tough to grasp and swallow, huh?
Wow, a generation of kids dumber than their parents. Kids of MAGAt parents must be a sight to behold.
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Yeah thats click bait.
None of tbe cognitive assessment tools we have are reliable in any scientific way. It’s all IQ test level of fundamental misunderstanding of human intelligence.
That being said there is 1 truth in the article - we do need to address learning to ways of human actually learn. Laptops or books or whatever it’s mostly irrelevant. Grades and exams and class of 20 people is not how humans learn. The entire education industry needs to be fundamentally reshaped.
Unpopular opinion: AI is the right tool for education revolution and many people are already taking advantage of this tool while education institutions close their eyes and push paper tests. LLMs are never going away.
