Jared Cooney Horvath is highly critical of digital tools in the classroom. Horvath is a neuroscientist who studies learning, memory, and cognition. His most recent book is The Digital Delusion.
On January 15, 2026, he testified before a Senate Committee, where he linked the use of technology to declining academic performance, not just in the U.S. but in other countries.
Here is his written testimony with graphs, footnotes, and other evidence to support his thesis.
Take five minutes and watch.
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is interesting that this damning study on Ed Tech has received so little attention from our elected representatives despite a presentation to a Senate committee. Horvath clearly shows that ed tech has failed our young people in every cognitive and academic domain, but it remains pervasive in our public schools. There has been no media outcry condemning ed tech that can compare to the endless claims the public has repeatedly heard about “failing public schools” for decades.
Hovath’s has many concerns about the future for young people that have been inundated by mindless ed tech. Horvath is worried about the implications of producing a workforce that is less adaptable with reduced ability to reason, a workforce and is less innovative, competitive, and less healthy. None of these concerns are an issue to the billionaires that matter in this country as their children will continue to get a world class education while most of our children suffer the consequences of being captured by Big $$$.
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We need to remember that claims of “our failing public schools” are a marketing ploy–to see Ed-tech and school choice.
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The conclusion of the article is that “Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them.” Maybe try discriminate digital use in learning environments.
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The document and testimony are compelling but only one aspect of the detriments of screens. Effects on learning are real. Policy makers need to go deep into addiction, concentration, thinking (actual “thinking about” what one is seeing/reading), and other factors.
Screens (from this qualitative perspective observing classrooms and grandchildren) affect kids (adults) from much worse than television, cartoons, and games than previous generations.
The old adage about being “glued to the screen” is nothing compared to this.
Fixation and Addiction: Try to interrupt a child holding a phone watching anything – real visuals or cartoon-lie. They don’t hear you. Fixated. How many times do children ask for the phone? First moment of boredom or 100% worse – parents who need time give the kid the phone. Restaurants? Fast food? Any event? The kid learns nothing about social interaction (and parents oblivious to other people).
And fixation is not concentration. A kid won’t blink for watching a phone but watch how long they look at words on paper or in a conversation without looking up.
Dr. Rick LaVoie – special education guru (F.A.T. City and other videos) comment stuck: Two kinds of attention disorder: Kids who can’t concentrate on anything and kids who concentrate / attend to everything.
Jane Healy – researcher on the brain was possibly the only person to criticize Sesame Street when it came out. Flashing images, segments less than 30 seconds, constant shifting of content and topic.
My two cents – that was nothing compared to the detriment of screens today, especially kid under 5, kids in schools where publishers have gone website-link and short passage crazy, and kids socialization.
It’s good to see advice that for little kids parents should sit with them and ask about the story and break the fixation on the screen – – but for too many it’s either a silencer and worse, behavior modification.
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The comment on Sesame Street is enlightening.
My kids [3 boys born 1987-1991] were highly exposed to Sesame St. As well as other PBS shows developed during that period that were characterized by constantly shifting mini-bites of info. Our boys were, shall we say, somewhat interested. Not sure how much they learned from those shows.
They lived for Shining Time Station, whose storied protagonists were anthropomorphical locomotive trains from early 20thC England—which spurred them to act out all those scenes & many more of their own invention, with Brio trains. As well as any Disney et al similar production companies’ feature movies from early 20thC right through late 20thC—acting out scenes from movies as well as ad-libbing their own, using purchased “action figures,” plus dressing up as the characters.
In my anecdotal experience (my own as well as my sons’), narrative stories is how kids learn. Sesame St & similar shows are simply ed-lessons dressed up with puppets or cartoons. Some learning gets through, mostly just alphabet & numbers—which can be learned in many other ways [notably, through books for 2.5-5yo’s].
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All children and adults respond to a good narrative!
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Excellent commentary in substack “A new bill gaining momentum would end Washington’s aversion to reining in Big Tech.” Addresses addiction, socialization, and much, much more
(Note – the author is a young man who started sending out his “Wake Up to Politics” emails to “subscribers” when he was in junior high! Everyday – all through high school and then college!
https://open.substack.com/pub/wakeuptopolitics/p/congress-never-regulated-social-media?r=268aue&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
His intro:
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), right, is the lead author of the GUARD Act.
The more American life has become wrapped around our smartphones, the less we seem to like it.
“Parents and children don’t always agree on much, but many are aligned on this. In a pair of 2024 surveys conducted by The Harris Poll, 55% of American parents said they wished social media had never been invented. 40% of Gen Z respondents said the same. Dissatisfaction was even higher with some platforms in specific: More than two-thirds of young Americans use TikTok, but almost half said if they could snap their fingers and eliminate the app, they would. (Ditto 62% of parents.) If only.”
(note – those of us MO hate it but sometimes fist-bumping Sen Hawley (the Jan 6 dasher) is right))
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I agree with his thesis that we are evolved to learn from other human beings. I agree that screen time does not help students for some reason.
Still, his viewpoint is bound to testing, which I consider to be the problem. He suggests that we can see drops in testing scores to prove that screen time is bad for students. I claim that 2010 as the break point in what scores he observed comes because that was when the emphasis on testing started its punitive phase.
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Most ed tech is electronic worksheets peppered with a few games to entice students. It is not generally engaging, challenging or interesting. It stunts students’ cognitive, social and emotional development. It may also have negative consequences for brain and eye development when students spend more than 4 hours staring at screens in school and sometimes additional time at home.
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Agreed. We are seeing a confluence of disastrous decisions made at the top. Turning over education to machines. Big mistake. Implementing Common Core tests–another big mistake. In the latter case, education in Math, to some extent, and ELA, to an enormous extent, devolved into test prep exercises related to particular CC “standards,” as opposed to coherent lessons. Why? Because all administrators cared about was that they were going to be judged on test results.
The data are in. These horrific mistakes (including the so-called state standards that are basically renamings of some version of the Common Core), the associated testing, and the over-reliance on computer instruction–all need to go. Until or unless that happens, we will continue to fall further and further behind.
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Good catch on testing. But we can’t easily untangle the testing from the screen-exposure. 2010 was the zenith of NCLB high-stakes annual stdzd testing/ accountability systems– suddenly tied to Common Core stds in 46 states– with universal testing facilitated by computer administration and scoring of those tests. 2010 was also the point at which iPhone use among youth became widespread—and ed-tech in schools as well.
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In regard to reading achievement, is it the poor quality of digital teaching materials in general or is it the content of those materials (e.g., mindless skill and drill on phonics). In the end, his data clearly illustrate a downward trend on standardized tests using large data sets and suggested by meta-analyses across many studies. Yet, any interpretation of that data is speculative about causes and about theoretical explanations. It certainly doesn’t mean unequivocally that digital teaching materials are the root cause of a decline. In the end, he argues that more research is needed. Thus, it is too early for any definitive interpretations and recommendations. But, at least we now have an alternative explanation for declines in reading achievement (poor quality online instruction) instead of a lack of “structured literacy” (phonics). Further, this scientific evidence adds perhaps inconvenient explanations for those who claim that the “Science of Reading” is a settled once and for all in terms of how reading is taught.
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The reading concerns with pervasive ed tech are both content and process related, IMO. Many secondary school students are no longer doing any sustained reading in literature. They are mostly reading excerpts from books on-line, both fiction and non-fiction, which are followed by bubble test questions. Students do not benefit from discussing the material, and they cannot benefit from something called the peer effect. In other words they do not get to hear what other think which helps them form thoughts about the work, perhaps draw conclusions, or even reject what another student thinks. These are cognitive tasks that a steady diet of excerpts and bubble tests do not address. In addition, they rarely get the opportunity to give a written response to what they have read. These types of tasks develop the capacity to become a critical thinker and skilled reader and writer.
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Your focus on science of reading [SOR, structured phonics practice] applies only to PK-3 or 4 at most. But decline in reading ability shows up in higher grades as well—including in states focusing on SOR in early grades. In fact, in states long pioneering SOR in earliest grades (such as MS, LA, FL), 8th grade reading results show a return to the same low reading achievement as seen long before SOR programs were applied.
I recognize my argument doesn’t distinguish between whether digital teaching materials are used or not as regards teaching SOR. But I suspect a study would show that in fact SOR leans heavily on canned digital sw content.
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if the politicians think they can be successful under the current failed system of education, they are sadly mistaken.
Education must be about learning, not about winning.
Everytime a fifth grade reader is placed in eighth grade, the school system is lying. Every time a 17 year old, reading at a third grade level is retained to third grade a they are destroying that child and the young ones around them. See what I mean about the need for systemic change?
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