July 16, 2026 - Argentina Stuns England To Advance

Screens down, pencils up.

Jean Twenge came for the smartphones. Jared Cooney Horvath is coming for the Chromebooks.

Horvath is a teacher turned neuroscientist - a Harvard master’s, a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Melbourne - and his self-published book, "The Digital Delusion," has become the intellectual engine of a grassroots revolt against screens in schools. Parents hands out copies at school board meetings. Hugh Grant blurbs it. Randi Weingarten calls him a "leading researcher." Penguin Random House republishes it in August.

His argument is blunt: ed tech isn’t underperforming because of bad software or poor training. It’s fundamentally incompatible with how humans learn. He synthesized some 400 meta-analyses covering more than 20,000 studies and found technology’s effect on learning hasn’t budged since 1977. IQ scores are falling for the first time in measured history - the "Reverse Flynn Effect" - along with literacy, numeracy, and even working memory. Our kids, he argues, are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. The countries that use classroom tech the least - Japan, Singapore, China - keep outperforming everyone else.

Critics say he’s confusing correlation with causation, and that moderate device use may actually help. Horvath’s response: show me the data. He testified before the U.S. Senate in January. A clip of it has nearly 3 million views.

He insists he’s not anti-tech. He’s pro-learning. Tools built for experts to produce, he says, are not tools for novices to learn.

So should we stop giving kids laptops and tablets? Something to think about before they go back to school - and something I’ll ask Horvath on Thursday’s radio program.

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