“Although it once seemed like a good idea to give every child his or her own device, it’s clear that those policies have been a failure.”

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School-issued laptops distract students at school and home, expose them to things they shouldn’t see, and hurt learning.

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Great column by @jean_twenge:

She observes that “the decline in test scores started well before the pandemic, around 2012. One obvious culprit is smartphones, which became popular just as test scores started to decline.”

But “phones are not the only electronic devices students use at school. These days, nearly every middle and high school student — and a good number in the elementary grades as well — brings a laptop or tablet to school and uses it at home for homework.” “Many of these devices are provided by schools. You might think that these school-issued devices allow only a limited number of functions, like access to classroom Canvas pages and Google Docs. If you assumed that, you would be wrong.” This is a major problem.

Kids are distracted by their laptops and seeing things they shouldn’t see.

A mother “asked school administrators to restrict her son’s use of the laptop” and “they resisted, saying the device was integral to the curriculum.”

These devices also have a negative impact at home where they continue to distract and disrupt: And, of course, the distractions negatively impact learning: @jean_twenge makes numerous recommendations.

Read the whole thing:
nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opi…