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We Gave Students Laptops and Took Away Their Brains
“Over the past two decades, educational technology has exploded from a niche supplement into a $400 billion juggernaut,” reports Jared Cooney Horvath. (George Wilhelm/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Decades of data show a clear pattern: The more schools digitize, the worse students perform.
By Jared Cooney Horvath
12.05.25 — Education
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When people think about excessive technology in schools, their minds usually go to phones. But according to a new book from neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, we’re overlooking the true culprits: the laptops sitting on students’ desks. In “The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning—and How to Help Them Thrive Again,” Horvath explains why consuming information through screens leads to falling performance, fractured attention, and the slow erosion of rigorous thought.

We’re proud to publish an exclusive, adapted excerpt from the book that answers an urgent question: Why, after generations of progress, are today’s children less intellectually capable than their parents? —The Editors

This might be one of the hardest truths today’s parents have to face:

Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age.

The daughter who once loved school, but now dreads it. The son who used to devour books, but now scrolls until midnight. Fading memory, slipping focus. Something is wrong, and many of us have felt it.

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Jared Cooney Horvath
Jared Cooney Horvath (PhD, MEd) is a neuroscientist, educator, and best-selling author who specializes in human learning and brain development. He is the creator of The Learning Blueprint, an international award-winning program helping educators and students understand how learning actually works. Jared has conducted research and taught at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Melbourne, and has worked with more than 1,000 schools around the world. He is the author of six books, has published over fifty research articles, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, and PBS’s NOVA. He currently serves as Director of LME Global, an organization dedicated to bringing cutting-edge brain and behavioral science to educators, students, and communities.
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