Screens train multitasking, not learning: the harder classrooms digitize, the worse kids do
The harder classrooms have pushed digital tools since 2010, the further children's cognition and digital literacy have fallen across the board; screens train multitasking rather than learning, and AI only makes the errors harder to see.
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The more technology you push into a classroom, the less kids learn
Jared defines the ‘digital illusion’ as the default assumption that technology equals learning. From 2010 onward, schools brought in education technology at scale, expecting it to deliver more information, unlock creativity, and free students from rote memorization. The data say the opposite: people are simply not good at learning from technology, and the more technology you inject into a classroom, the more sharply learning development and cognitive ability decline. It can be a tool for producing work, but it is not a tool for the classroom.
— Jared Cooney HorvathThe one skill school actually trains to mastery is multitasking
The first mechanism of learning is attention, and multitasking lowers both accuracy and speed at the same time while pushing memory into a secondary network. But a computer is a multitasking machine by design: children spend more than 2,500 hours a year multitasking on computers, and doing homework at home they start drifting after an average of 6 minutes. Even in a classroom with a teacher watching, 24 to 38 minutes of every hour go to being off-task. By the ten-thousand-hour rule, four years of this makes them expert at exactly one thing — multitasking.
— Jared Cooney HorvathText without page numbers gives memory nothing to hold on to
Human memory leans heavily on spatial location: a book's fixed three-dimensional coordinates become the cue for retrieval, which is why after finishing one you can roughly recall which page a passage sat on. On a screen, text flows in at the bottom and out at the top; three-dimensional position is erased, and that entire dimension of memory is discarded. After about four or five minutes the brain starts signaling ‘I'm not receiving this’, and the reader stops reading deeply and switches to scanning for keywords.
— Jared Cooney HorvathThe more schools teach computers, the less competent kids are with them
Take the ICILS international digital-literacy test across the decade from 2013 to 2023: the share of children explicitly taught at school how to use a computer rose by about 600%, while the share clearing the minimum digital-literacy threshold fell by about 11%. It holds in every single country — the more technology is emphasized, the less fluent children are with technology. What matters is not whether you can operate the tool but whether you have anything to bring to it; a hammer only means something in the hands of a carpenter.
— Jared Cooney HorvathAn expert offloads to a tool; a child outsources to it
When an expert uses a tool, that is offloading: he already has enough knowledge to check the output. A statistician would need four hours by hand and the computer returns the result in twenty seconds, but he can tell immediately whether it is right or wrong. When a child uses the same tool, it is outsourcing: he can only type in, copy, and paste, with no idea of the process and no idea whether the result is any good, so all he can do is wait for someone else to nod. The consequence is that he never learns the facts or the procedure — he only learns to depend on the machine.
— Jared Cooney HorvathPersonalized learning only works on material the student already knows
Individualized practice works only for drilling material already learned, and that is the single place technology is supported by the data. But most of classroom time is spent on things students cannot yet do, and that requires self-regulated learning ability — which about 95% of children do not have. Those children need a teacher giving everyone the same information and a group discussion around it. The data in fact show that once instruction becomes genuinely personalized, most children check out. The irony is that technology was originally sold as the thing that would kill rote memorization, and the one function that works is drill-and-kill.
— Jared Cooney HorvathAI's errors drift, which is why they never get caught
AI will accelerate the cognitive decline. An ordinary piece of digital courseware may contain errors, but those errors are fixed, so a teacher can spot and correct them. AI's errors drift, moving anywhere between 20% and 35% at any moment: ten children work the same problem, nine get it right and one gets it wrong, and it is never caught. Someone asked him about the line that ‘the people who can use AI will replace you’; Jared's point is that it is experts who use AI. AI literacy, at bottom, means you have to understand more than the AI does in order to fix the mistakes it makes.
— Jared Cooney HorvathThe fix is not a new system but a return to 2010
Policy is turning: at the start of the year 3 U.S. states had education-technology bills, and today 31 states do. The Australian state of Victoria has already banned its use for children in year two and below and pulled it back sharply in primary school. The good news, Jared says, is that we do not have to invent a new system — we only have to step back onto the track that already existed in 2010: textbooks, paper and pencil, blackboards, and discussion are all still there. His concrete advice to parents is to buy a printer, keep home study on paper as much as possible, and start talking to teachers about ‘non-essential technology out’.
— Jared Cooney HorvathIn their own words · checked verbatim
So we've got this mistaken assumption that technology equals learning.
Jared Cooney Horvath1:56
Now, when you give that exact same tool to a novice to a kid. They are not doing offloading. They're doing what's called outsourcing.
Jared Cooney Horvath12:47
The best they can do is type things into a tool. When it spits it out, they can copy, paste it handed to somebody else.
Jared Cooney Horvath12:47
As soon as you inject AI, they work worse. … the AI just starts to confuse the system more than solidify it.
Jared Cooney Horvath28:22
if you've been in a classroom longer than 10 years, you already know the problem. It's just no one has put words to it yet.
Jared Cooney Horvath29:25
you never asked to have a screen shoved in your face for six hours a day
Jared Cooney Horvath30:26
Figures
| Hours a year children spend multitasking on computers | more than 2,500 hours | 6:09 |
| Average interval before distraction when studying on a computer at home | about 6 minutes | 6:09 |
| Time per classroom hour spent off-task or multitasking | 24-38 minutes | 6:09 |
| Time threshold at which on-screen reading turns into scanning | about 4-5 minutes | 8:29 |
| Rise in the share of students explicitly taught digital technology, 2013-2023 | about 600% | 9:38 |
| Fall over the same period in the share of students clearing the minimum digital-literacy threshold | about 11% | 9:38 |
| Share of students able to learn on their own in front of a screen | about 5% | 23:03 |
| Error drift once AI is built into digital tutoring systems | 20%-35% | 27:18 |
| Change in the number of U.S. states advancing education-technology bills | 3 at the start of the year → 31 today | 29:25 |
| Grades where the Australian state of Victoria restricts classroom technology | year two and below | 29:25 |
Glossary
- Ed tech
- The connected teaching devices, software, and online tutoring systems used in classrooms.
- ICILS
- The International Computer and Information Literacy Study, an international test of students' digital skills, administered once in 2013 and once in 2023.
- Offloading
- An expert using a tool to save effort, but with enough knowledge to verify the output himself.
- Outsourcing
- A novice handing the thinking and the learning process to a tool, unable to judge whether the result is right.
- SRLs
- Self-regulated learning skills — a student's ability to plan, monitor, and adjust their own learning.
- Drill-and-kill
- Teaching by heavy repetitive practice until the material is drilled in; usually said with disapproval.
How to listen
K-12 school administrators, parents agonizing over their kids' screen time, education-app founders, and engineers who need to explain to a school why they oppose AI in the classroom.
Listeners who only want the what-to-do can jump to the policy and parenting advice after 29:25; the mechanism argument before that can be skipped.