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.
I make a comment saying the title here, like a week ago, and its controversial.
I say ‘if you don’t understand this that’s because you’re not familiar with current stats and papers’.
Look.
Everybody is scrambling to actually explain the causal mechanism(s).
… The observed effect though, is so broad and obvious and undeniable, that that’s why everyone is scrambling to try and explain it.
Personally, my inclination is that for-profit, advertisement-oriented social media apps are the ‘cigarettes’ of the digital age… because they are literally precision designed to hijack your attention, cause addiction via hijacking your dopamine/reward neurochemistry, prey on and exploit all your innate/subconscious insecurities, and they reward and amplify convenience, outrage and excess.
But that’s just a hypothesis. Again, what’s undeniable is that… we have, broadly, peaked.
Unless of course we can figure out how to reverse that, and then actually implement whatever needs to be done, to actually reverse it.
Fully back up your theory for the main cause. Screen time has vastly taken over the times of students as their brains are developing and by and large it feeds the least enriching, least challenging content as it has the highest propensity for addiction (under the guise of user retention)
I predict we’ll view this experiment with the same confused disgust as we do when we hear that doctors used to prescribe cocaine for pretty much anything. The software engineers who aided any of this are going to be ashamed of their work.
I do not disagree that social media is having a negative effect but just the over abundance of information, ease of access to it, and a lot being false. It’s exacerbated that we treated iPads and phones like our parents did television as a “shut up kid” distraction.