Are Laptops Quietly Making Us Dumber?

Don’t know if you heard, but American kids can’t read or write or do math anymore. And it’s not just the pandemic that set them back, since all indications suggest that the downturn was already happening, and all the pandemic did was expedite it. Now, there’s a new bogeyman: AI.

We’re at the point where it’s damn near a full-blown crisis, and we need every opinion and suggestion we can get.

A brand-new and fascinating perspective was published in the New York Times opinion section. According to psychology professor and longtime screen-time researcher Jean M. Twenge, all the blame heaped onto AI should probably be shifted over to something much more insidious in its innocuousness: laptops.

In the New York Times op-ed, Twenge argues, rather convincingly, that the test score nosedive does not neatly coincide with the rise of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots. They have been spiraling for nearly two decades, which happens to neatly coincide with laptops and eventually tablet devices being closely paired with education.

Twenge cites several studies that paint a brutal picture: A 2016 Michigan State study found college students spent 40 percent of class time doing literally anything but learning. A 2018 meta-analysis showed students who typed notes were 75 percent more likely to fail than the pen-and-paper crowd. Her own recent research ties heavier in-school device use to steeper test score declines.

Sounds like an easy enough fix, right? Slap on some content blockers, and you’re all set. Most schools can’t even be bothered to do that, though. Twenge cites the mother of a 9th grader in Washington, DC, who wrote a piece in Washingtonian magazine. In it, she describes how easy it is for her kid to spend class watching shows and playing games on a school-issued laptop instead of learning.

What good is a school-issued laptop if kids can use it to not pay attention in school?

Twenge is not subtle in her conclusion: laptops are distraction machines that hinder learning. The more education drips toward the endless vortex of distraction, the worse students perform, even when you control for natural academic ability.

AI, Twenge argues, isn’t the problem. The real problem is much older than that, and it’s a requirement according to their syllabi.