‘Gen Z has underperformed on every cognitive measure’: Neuroscientist cautions against overuse of tech in education

At a time when classrooms across the world are rapidly going digital, with tablets replacing textbooks and screens becoming central to learning, concerns are growing about how this shift may be affecting children’s cognitive development. While technology is often seen as a tool to enhance education, some experts now argue that its overuse, especially in schools, could be doing more harm than good.

The debate gained traction after Nikhil Kamath shared a clip of Jared Cooney Horvath speaking about the issue, along with his own observations as a parent.

“For most parents, digital devices have become a pacifier, it’s a way to keep them quiet, and it’s understandable, but ends up creating a dependency in the long run,” Kamath wrote.

Sharing his personal experience, he added, “At Kiaan’s school, no digital device is allowed and at home, we restrict screen time to 30 mins a day. But even then, it is crazy the addiction to reels/clips, I normally catch him browsing through that.”

A worrying shift in learning outcomes

In the clip, Horvath, a former teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist, made a striking claim. “Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age,” he said, adding that he does not receive funding from big tech.

Horvath pointed out that for over a century, each generation had outperformed the previous one on measures of cognitive development, a trend largely attributed to increased schooling. “Since we’ve been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents,” he noted.

Gen Z ‘underperforming’ across measures

However, he argued that this pattern has reversed with Gen Z. “Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have, from basic attention to memory to literacy to numeracy to executive functioning to even general IQ, even though they go to more school than we did,” he said.

What changed around 2010

According to Horvath, the turning point came around 2010, when digital technology became widely integrated into classrooms. “What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development?” he asked, suggesting that the answer lies in the tools used within schools.

Data from 80 countries shows decline

Citing international data, he said that across 80 countries, increased use of digital technology in education is linked to lower performance. “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.

He added that similar trends can be observed in the United States by comparing state-level academic data with the adoption of one-to-one technology in classrooms. “The data will plateau and then start to drop,” he claimed.

‘Decades of research show same pattern’

While acknowledging that much of the data is correlative, Horvath said decades of academic research support the same conclusion. “We have academic research stretching back to 1962 that shows the exact same story for 60 years. When tech enters education, learning goes down,” he said.

Learning is ‘biological’, not digital

Explaining the possible reasons, he said the issue is biological rather than technological. “We have evolved biologically to learn from other human beings, not from screens. And screens circumvent that process,” he said.

Are standards being lowered

He also warned against changing educational standards to fit digital habits. Recalling how reading comprehension tests used to work, he said students were earlier required to read long passages and answer inferential questions. But recent changes, including in the SAT, show a shift.

“Last year, the SATs had a reading comprehension section… Here is a single sentence of 75 words. Here is one question… Last year, they redefined reading comprehension to mean 54 short sentences with one question about each. That is skimming. That’s not reading,” he said.

“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. That’s not progress, that is surrender,” he added.

‘Not just phones, all screens impact learning’

Horvath concluded by cautioning that the issue goes beyond smartphones and social media. “It doesn’t matter what the size of the screen is… all of these things are also going to hurt learning, which in turn are going to hurt our kids’ cognitive development,” he said.