Schools Limiting Digital Devices? Really? Yes

“Attention is the gateway to learning,” educators say. Today, however, they face a significant attention problem - the gateway is an obstacle course created by our immersion in digital technology.
Imagine removing all digital screens from the classroom. A step backward. Damaging to student learning. Idiotic in our tech world. These are just a few of the descriptions we would expect to hear from parents, students, and, likely, many educators.
Digital screens were essential to student learning during school shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. They allow students to take classes and interact visually with a teacher during a raging blizzard.
Children coming to their first day of preschool or kindergarten have been playing with digital devices in their strollers and highchairs. There are many educational web sites for them. So, who would even think of removing digital devices from the classroom or significantly reducing their use?
Sweden did.
“In May of 2023, schools minister Lotta Edholm announced that Swedish classrooms would aim to significantly reduce student-facing digital technology and embrace more traditional practices like reading hardcopy books and taking handwritten notes,” Jared Cooney Hovrath writes on the Substack site After Babel. He is a neuroscientist and educator focused on brain and behavioral research to help teachers teach more effectively and improve student learning.
“The announcement was met with disbelief among pundits and the wider international public: why would an entire country willingly forgo those digital technologies which are widely touted to be the future of education?” he asks.
Research is increasingly showing us why Sweden as well as other European and Asian countries are looking at limiting digital technology in the classroom.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization focused on finding ways to “build stronger, fairer and cleaner societies - helping to shape better policies for better lives.”
A study it conducted on the impact of digital devices in the classroom found that: “Students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes.”
A recent analysis investigating the impact of computers on reading performance among K-12 students across the U.S. concludes, “…even small daily amounts (30 minutes) of use of digital devices in classrooms are negatively related to scores on a reading comprehension test,” he writes.
Hundreds of studies in recent years have shown that student learning in math, literacy, sciences, and writing, has declined.
Yes, they help.  But Hovrath points out, these studies have found that providing air conditioning to the classroom on hot days has a greater impact on learning than digital devices.
Yes, they help, but Hovrath’s research shows that learning “will be slower, less robust, and likely lead to a drop in rank compared to other, more powerful, non-digital methods.”
Despite these studies continued “excitement over digital technology in education suggests that we may be dealing less with an issue of evidence and more with an issue of wishful thinking,” Hovrath writes.
It is not so much wishful thinking as the giddy excitement in the early 2000s of what the digital age promised for student education, informing citizens, and a world of information available with a few keystrokes. But this potential was quickly replaced by the engineered addictiveness of social media, shallow learning, and constant distraction leading to an inability to focus deeply.
Our ability to learn is limited or expanded by our ability to focus. Multi-tasking distracts the brain, creating shallow memories and limited learning.
How often we use a device trains our brain in its use. The more we use it, the more we become familiar with its capabilities, the better we are at using it. Practice and use create a habit. Not all habits are good. Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent, guitar teacher Justin Sandercoe says. What we’ve made permanent through our use of the internet and digital devices has diminished our skills rather than improving them.
A study Hovrath writes about says that based on how students between the ages of 8 and 18 use digital devices during and after school based in a typical school year of 36 weeks, found a student spent 198 hours for learning but 2,028 hours for entertainment. That entertainment often means rapidly changing from one message to the next, one TikTok video to the next, and to the next Instagram post.
If use determines focus and habit, students are being trained for shallow learning and impatience with reading anything that takes more than a few minutes.
It’s not that the internet and digital devices don’t have tremendous capability for learning, it’s that they’ve programmed all of us for multi-tasking, frequent changes, and scanning.
Students with a digital device in the classroom are in many ways like an addict cut off from a drug. They suffer from anxiety, and they need to feed their compulsive behavior.
This is the reason why Sweden is shifting back to book learning. It is giving students the digital device-free school day to weaken their addiction and increase their focus on learning.
Not all of Horvath’s findings on the use of digital screens in school are negative. He acknowledges that when used in the classroom by teachers who are well-trained in their selective use, problems with multitasking and distraction can be reduced.
“I do not say that (digital technologies,) when used properly by a skilled teacher, will not help (learning), but I doubt that it can do better than pencil and paper, or speech itself, when used properly by a skilled teacher.” Hovrath quotes media scholar Neil Postman.
And while we said earlier in this column that they were invaluable during COVID and during blizzards, that learning comes with a challenge. “In fact, in a recent survey, 95% of students admit to media multitasking during distance learning,  with 15% admitting going off-task over 30 times per session,” Hovrath writes.
If schools can significantly limit the use of screens in educating students, Hovrath says  “educational and cognitive research” shows students will perform better and see “improvements in student relationships, mental health, and physical wellbeing.”