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.
The problem isn’t “Tech” or “Laptops” or even “Tablets” ; but the addictive nonsense so-called “Tech-companies” spend all their efforts designing instead of trying to solve any actual problems…
…In the pile with the other disappointments.
tosses it on top of X-men after Fall of X
IMO, in the US
- Common core replaced a better curriculum. Courses seem dumbed down and doesn’t really prepare you anymore for college maths
- Grades were extremely inflated during covid because obviously students would not be motivated to study
- Grades are a lot lenient now. Most classes are passing people that would’ve previously been considered a fail
- AI was touted as a replacement for thinking and had repercussions when students started using it to just do all the work
- School is increasingly a for profit system now. Most colleges are increasing tuition without improving classes, and attracting enrollment by touting the hollywood college life experience.
- There’s a lot of negativity in the younger generation, especially as those who see their older siblings fail to find anything in the job market. What’s the point of college if it can’t land you a good job?
So you’re saying the lockdowns had long term negative effects… Interesting 🤔
As opposed to the massacre of an uncurbed pandemic
(Also, those effects don’t exist in a vacuum, and without much in the way of an attempt to mitigate them, the knock-on effects become more severe than they would have to.)
For sure. I love my kids, he’s 15. He scores above average in the state/national tests (map ect). He can tell me the date, when the first bomb dropped in fallou 4, but has no fucking idea when the declaration of independence was signed, can’t figure out how to cook anything from a box, can’t name 10 countries in the world, and had zero idea how to do anything for himself.
The sad thing is I taught for 20 years in elementary level. All the have us teach is tests, ELA, Math, fuck science,art, geography,history. These kids are literally functionally mentally handicapped because they just want higher and higher test scores to jerk off to at the cost of kids who are functional.
first bomb dropped in fallout? what about ww2, japan? i have been hearing some people go through HS not knowing 1945 happened.
The history curriculum must be reworked as a FPS.
Unironically, I do think there is a great opportunity in education for video games.
Unfortunately, the historically inspired games I most prominently see are the likes of Assassin’s Creed whose creativity clearly runs just as freely as all the slaves they sweep under the rug and who use the names of historical events and figures as faithfully as a CEO uses those of ethical values.
If these are the games children learn from, no wonder their education is as fucked up as the past these games present should be, but isn’t.
Then history would be the favorite subject by many pupils.
You can’t make such a statement about a whole generation without referring to a large cohort study.
I don’t know about that, even with their digital lobotomy, gen z votes a lot smarter than older generations.
the older Gen z , the younger ones are pretty lacking, plus thier aspiration is to be influencers, at least some of them.
Stupid kids! Choose a more realistic career, like astronaut.
67 skibbidy dapper.
The above is probably why.
I’m willing to bet most of us laughed at E so I’m not saying a damn thing lol
badger badger badger badger mushroom
snaaaaaaaake snaaaaaaake
Younger gen z are incredibly dumb this really isn’t anything new or up for debate.
So is most people, myself included. Millennial btw
Millennial is like the only generation that comfortably says we’re all stupid.
You only need to read the headlines in any newspaper to come to this conclusion.
I honestly blame the software we use. It’s made to be profitable, not to educate. Every fucking article is full of bullshit “click here!” for profit.
Where is the global and universal app to learn fucking everything? That teaches you, lets you read unlimited textbooks (oh piracy!) or science papers, quizzes you, scores you, lets you compete with others, gives you a diploma that is worth something?
Why do we expect an internet that has been captured by capitalism and is algorithmically tuned to maximize profit and brainwashing to be good for intelligence? That is what advertising is brainwashing, and it ru(i)ns everything.
PS: Of course, I have no idea how good online learning resources of schools actually are. I’m just going to assume they are abyssal. Because why wouldn’t they be terrible.
Blame the parents that have abdicated their responsibility to raise their children and outsource that to screens.
My kids have grown up with screens since birth, but our going-into-fourth-grader has a 12th grade reading level and our going-into-second-grader has an 11th grade reading level because we make teaching them at home a priority.
They both score way above grade level in math and science as well. Their teachers constantly say they can tell which parents actually make their kids education a priority and which parents don’t give a shit and expect the teachers to do it all.
Let’s apply some critical thinking here. You’re saying your 7yr old has the reading comprehension of a 17yr old. I don’t buy that. I read voraciously as a child and in 7th grade I had an 11th grade reading level. I have a 7yr old who reads voraciously and they are nowhere near an 11th grade level. They rarely get screen time either. Education is a huge priority for us as well, but 11th grade reading level at 7? That ain’t real.
Probably this says more about this specific school district and what they expect of their students than about the reading comprehension a child compared to an adolescent.
I mean believe it or don’t. I don’t give a shit lol. It’s true. I was the same way as a kid, far ahead of all of my peers with a high school reading level in first grade, twice in school scored the highest in the state for standardized testing for my grade. I even got two little trophies from the state for it.
Their mom is an insane reader as well, and clocks 100+ books a year.
They got a great head start with genetics, but we’ve also put a ton of effort into fostering that.
Well done. Did you limit screen time and got them to read physical books and such? And yeah, it’s definitely impossible without parenting, but you also need the right “tools” or learning environment and software. I don’t think that exists, at least not as open source / non commercial.
Yeah they are limited on their screen time. They have to do an hour of reading before they can do any fun screen time, then they can do whatever until bed as long as homework is done.
At bedtime they have to be in bed, but can use their kindles to read until 10 when they automatically lock on them.
I learned a lot because there was friction in the tools. There’s a point where „accessible“ software (and I don’t mean accessible in the sense of making it usable with screen readers and other disability support) becomes detrimental. Like the complete abstraction that mobile devices have from a filesystem now - many younger people can’t use a hierarchical file explorer as a result.
Yeah that’s definitely true, IT systems becoming too easy to use. They should have given the students raspberry PIs and some wire and mechanical switches instead of McBooks, let them build their own laptops lol.
That poor child in the stock photo getting shown for an article on how children are getting dumber…
That being said, the reason why children are getting ‘dumber’ is probably because a) education is getting less money every year b) social media is destroying their attention span c) intelligence isn’t valued enough by society
At no point is getting a notebook part of the problem. Young people need to learn how to use technology.
deleted by creator
Problem: we’re not spending enough on educators to teach kids
News Articles: we paid apple 10 billion dollars but the laptops made these kids dumber.
You gave a bunch of kids systems they’re completely locked out of modifying and garden walled to shit and then act shocked when they learn nothing from them.
Jesus
That’s not true, they learned something. It just wasn’t beneficial at all.
And who designed the software and tools leading to this?
Google.
Which is run by their parents’ generation
It’s run by techbros who live in a different reality then the rest of us.
they do, plus they SHIELD thier children from the brainrot they caused with thier SOcial media, propaganda. so they can go through life academically achieving, nepotized jobs, assuming most of them dont become lazy and entitled, probably setting them up for political/celebrity careers to perpetuate the cycle.
I don’t think framing it generationally is useful. Your average mum and dad have little to nothing to do with it.
Nothing in USA rewards intelligence. Not education system, not employers, not government. Why develop a skill that isn’t in demand? Would you want to develop medieval brickmaking just because some researcher is measuring for it?
This is what happens when you don’t grow up with Math Munchers and Brain Age.
As a society, we chose to only teach ONE FUCKING GENERATION how to use technology and then went “well, young people ‘just understand’ technology, we don’t need to teach it anymore” and then somehow decided to just give all the kids a fucking tablet or laptop and assume they would LEARN THROUGH OSMOSIS I GUESS? Meanwhile we are defunding education across the country to absolutely shameful lows. (yes, I’m focused on the USA - I doubt “Cooney Horvath” is basing this broad generalization meant to scare people into buying his books on a study of ALL CHILDREN ALL OVER THE WORLD) AND THEN we let tech-bro-oligarchs decide EVERYTHING related to tech for two entire fucking decades and are just SHOCKED they did the thing that was best for profits, not the children (whose lives it was actively ruining for profit).
BUT YES, JARED HORNY CORVATH, your astute observations PROVE it was the fault of the LAPTOP that the next generations are “INHERANTLY DUMBER” (feels like a dog whistle, I dunno for what - but it’s trying to justify something, I can feel it in my bones).
moreover, I’m convinced the entire reason my generation (millennials) turned out to be tech-savvy was because adults didn’t understand it, were trying to control and curtail our usage, and we were mostly focused on finding ways to circumvent boomer and gen-x meddling in our usage.
Nah that’s not it. People who used computers in the 50s, 60s and 70s were tech savvy. But that was just a small percentage of the population.
When mass adoption of computers started in the late eighties, through the nineties and early 00s computers needed a lot of tinkering and care in their usage.
People were forced to use their brains to use the computer and learn tech skills. Then computers started to become a lot more streamlined and people didn’t have to put as much thought into using them. It parallels cars and TVs, just in a more complex system.
People who used computers in the 60s were more tech savvy than people who used computers in the 70s who were more savvy than those in the 80s who were better at computers than those in the 90s and so on. Because they had to learn more to use them and take care of them.
New tech (like the web) meant you had to get used to new stuff, which younger people do better than older people.
But if you speak to a boomer who has kept up with the technology you can bet that they are more capable and have more knowledge about tech than us millennials.
With cars, I don’t get it we’ve even collectively given up standard maintenance. When I tell people I did my own oil change or change my brake pads, they look at me like I’m some sort of magician or Tim Taylor. It’s like, dudes, you’re supposed to be doing it yourself – it’s not hard. And it costs me $40 to diy an oil change compared to $100 for a Quick Lube. Brake pads are a little more difficult, but also are standard maintenance and totally possible. Cost savings of diy vs shop there is hundreds of dollars.
I’ve not met boomers that have kept up on tech. In fact, all of the boomers I know now use tech like the Gen Z kids.
I was once in a room with a boomer, I’m a Millennial, and a Gen Zer. I said, “your generation invented the tech, my generation perfected it, and your generation takes it all for granted.”
deleted by creator
THIS. PREACH. I couldn’t say it better myself. Abso-friggin-lutely.
“Technology” is SUCH an abused word by these absolute simpletons. “Technology” didn’t cause this. They did what they always do: They thoughtlessly expect their false god, The Market, to somehow organically solve the problem of education and human betterment, if only we sacrifice enough money to it.
Giving kids laptops? MAYBE, right? Huge MAYBE. Ask any generation if elementary schoolers on unsupervised internet connections was a good friggin idea.
But tablets and Chromebooks?! GTFO. Right out. Those things are barely “technology.” They’re consumption devices optimized primarily to make ongoing profit from their users.
In 95% of cases, I’ll wager, nobody’s getting hands-on learning from a friggin iPad or Chromebook. Trying to “replace” standard desktops with those things collectively killed a huge chunk of our cognitive abilities as a society.
we let tech-bro-oligarchs decide EVERYTHING related to tech for two entire fucking decades and are just SHOCKED they did the thing that was best for profits, not the children (whose lives it was actively ruining for profit).
ONE. HUNDRED. PERCENT.
So many usability decisions and standards were coming from public univerisities and publicly transparent nonprofits. (Why we have an Internet that’s open source at its core, for instance. But I have a lot to research…) Even privately, standards were about the benefit of the users, rather than
“Let’s copy every decision Apple makes because look at their stonk price and slavishly drooling fanbase.”
My mom used to be awesome with our Windows 95 Packard Bell. She used internet forums, she figured out eBay when it was brand new, she ran DXDiag when games weren’t working. She knew how to freaking DEFRAG the thing.
Now she struggles and panics to do the most basic thing if it’s not 1-step on her iPhone. It’s tragic. Heartbreaking. And I hate them for it.
We let the filthy marketers from packaged goods and casino industries run amok in tech, and that’s how we got here : Tech is largely not the incredible new tools we dreamed of to live better lives, instead its often closer to smoking and gambling .
If you let marketers take over anything , unregulated, it inevitably takes the form of toxic vice, because our poorest choices make them the richest.
Mainstream technology doesn’t connect us, it isolates us. It doesn’t educate us, it actively endeavors to make us stupid . Every freaking bit of bandwidth reaching our eyeballs on the mainstream net is dedicated to reducing “friction” to rob our wallets and personal data.
I’m INFURIATED that most people can’t even handle organizing a file system anymore. Only private schools seem to teach actual computer education, and they all bought into this stupid lie that the “future” is cloud subscriptions served on brainrot e-waste.
I feel like we need to start “desktop computer clubs” or something. Seeing this crap like they’re trying to extinguish the personal computer is basically a declaration of war in my book…
My mom used to be awesome with our Windows 95 Packard Bell […] Now she struggles and panics to do the most basic thing if it’s not 1-step on her iPhone.
Hey, pardon me if I’m overstepping, but I’m going through the evaluation process with my mom right now and this could be an early sign of dementia (one that we initially dismissed). It could be nothing, but it might be a good idea to get her checked out if you have any other reason to be concerned.
straight facts.
the vacuum of responsible leadership/sane regulations opened the doors for corporations to colonize every corner of online activity. they have run amok with behavior-changing technologies. rather than implementing these new tools thoughtfully in the classroom (and at home), idiotic people wrote enormous checks to Apple and Microsoft, Google and other vendors, assuming that the kids would just, ya know, figure it out. magically, somehow.
a separate but related thought: we need to recognize that:
-
how kids use personal devices at home shapes their usage patterns at school. if their only reference point for what a “computer” is and does is unlimited brainrot attention baiting consumption, then guess what? they will see these devices purely as entertainment/addiction machines and nothing more.
-
kids mimic their parents behavior. if parents are zonked out all night mindlessly binging endless short form content and tv shows, they will come to understand that behavior as “normal” and “appropriate” and even “good”. society at large (and some parents) think kids must abide by different expectations than the ones they place on adults. kids know that’s hypocritical bullshit and will either emulate the bad behavior (with post hoc rationalizations) or resent the behavior (with maladaptations/ internalized guilt or resentment).
-
ive seen parents give phones to toddlers watching on the phones, ipads just to shut them up. defunding is mostly done by republicans, underfunding is pretty everywhere else, even in pretty decent blue areas. the money goes to admin/bureaucracy and redtaping teachers. the books, i recently saw students at my former hs, from 10+years ago sitll using the same kind of book( the blue book for chemistry edition), but they need to use newer books with updated info.
Nailed it. This is equally true for many countries beyond the US.
