For the first time in recorded history, a generation of children is performing worse cognitively than their parents did at the same age, and a leading cognitive neuroscientist says digital technology in classrooms may be largely to blame.
Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning, delivered the warning during a C-SPAN panel discussion on screen time and children’s development. He noted that since standardized cognitive measurement began in the late 1800s, every generation had outpaced the previous one across measures of attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive functioning and general IQ. Gen Z has broken that streak.
“Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have,” Horvath said, “even though they go to more school than we did.”
Horvath pointed to 2010 as a turning point, when the widespread adoption of digital technology in schools appeared to decouple classroom attendance from cognitive growth. Drawing on data from 80 countries, he argued the pattern is consistent and significant.
“Once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly to the point where kids who use computers about 5 hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school,” he said.
The trend holds in the United States as well. Horvath pointed to National Assessment of Educational Progress data, suggesting that in any state, researchers can track when one-to-one technology was adopted and observe scores plateau and then decline.
He also cited roughly six decades of academic research pointing in the same direction, referencing education psychologist Dylan William’s assessment that “ed tech is a revolution that’s been coming for 60 years, and we’re going to have to wait another 60 because it ain’t doing anything.”
Beyond the data, Horvath argued there is a biological explanation. Humans, he said, have evolved to learn from other people, not from screens. Screens circumvent that process regardless of how thoughtfully the technology is deployed.
He illustrated the cultural stakes with a pointed example involving the SAT. Where reading comprehension tests once asked students to analyze a 750-word passage and answer 10 to 12 largely inferential questions, the redesigned SAT presents 54 short sentences of roughly 75 words each, with one fact-based question per sentence. Horvath called it skimming, not reading, and suggested the redesign was shaped by how children interact with computers rather than by any meaningful educational goal.
“Rather than determining what do we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool,” he said. “That’s not progress, that is surrender.”
Horvath closed by urging that the conversation about screens extend beyond smartphones and social media to include school-sanctioned devices, arguing that the size or institutional approval of a screen does not change its effect on learning.
