So thrilled that Emily’s testimony made it over here to After Babel! When someone shared it in our SFCxUS group recently, I literally said that those 3 minutes of testimony needed to be shared far and wide… and now that’s happening. So thank you, Jon & Zach, for making that possible. And thank you, Emily, for continuing to stand up for our kids! 👏
This is amazing. She sums it up perfectly: "it’s alarming why I constantly have to prove with scientific research why this invasive technology is detrimental to our kids, when no one in the field of education can prove why it was introduced in the first place."
Just forwarded this to our school committee and superintendent.
And this is exactly why I never put my son in school and chose to homeschool. He has no free access to devices, and he's 12 now. His brain has to develop properly first. Otherwise, you are letting the screens rewire your kid's brain...permanently.
As to the whole false argument of coding and learning how to use tech - my son easily picks up coding b/c coding is simply logic. If a child is used to using some of their own critical thinking skills, they can learn anything, even how to use tech when they need to.
Too much screen time throughout childhood prevents the development of critical thinking skills, and you end up letting the tech control you, not you controlling the tech.
100%. That's why we did whatever we had to do, to give our three kids a Waldorf education, and had no television in the house the entire time they were growing up.
We have a tv in the house. But it can sit dark for weeks before we remember - oh yeah, let's have a family movie night. And even then, we are very deliberate in what we want to watch. Usually the movies are too long these days. I don't want to spend... uh..waste 2.5 hours of my day sitting still and watching something passively. How people can do this on the regular boggles me.
That day in the future when he's probably one of the few critical thinking people of his generation.... he will rule over them! LOL. It's not like we live on an isolated island. He has plenty of public school friends thru various activities.... and he even comments how immature and brain-dead they act sometimes.
It makes sense now why common core was a flop, it was intended to be a "loss leader" just like those nice avocados you see on sale when you first walk into the grocery store.
Silicon Valley execs know the tech is toxic, that's also why they opposed cell tower installs in Palo Alto as the infrastructure also reduces property values.
30 years in the classroom here, 5th grade to 12th, English and History, 7 different schools from Charter to private to public. Phone free schools are so fundamentally better than any kind of free- or semi-free range tech that it's mind-boggling why any Admin doesn't do it. (It's absurd to put enforcement on teachers alone, which is usually the case.)
BUT: Nobody, and it really is nobody, will stand up to what is just as self-evident even from this headline: "Silicon Valley Profit". The Tech companies and their responsibility. If the adults demonize the technology without addressing the real issue, namely the Social Media companies and their addiction algorithms, we reveal a confusing hypocrisy that negates our efforts as soon as students leave the classroom.
There's nothing inherently wrong with cellphones or what they provide; we adults wouldn't be doing this right here without them. Kids aren't stupid. If we frame the technology as inherently dangerous without demonstrating we're aware of both complications and responsibility, we lose all authority. This is what happens with alcohol and drugs all too often. But more significantly, by refusing to place most responsibility where it truly belongs - the social media platforms and their algorithms and content - we ultimately lose the battle because we're powerless to confront the real source of the harm. Not the phone itself, but the content being consumed and fed.
And the companies know this! They aren't in any way ignorant of it and have demonstrably proven again and again that they don't care. Even without the actual hard evidence, we know this simply because they claim either it's not their responsibility or that they are completely powerless.
And it's not like they have neither the finance nor expertise to act.
It truly is scary how blindly and gradually everyone was ushered into the e-phone world, where it now has veritably captured and consumed all our lives, not just our children’s.
Parents and “grown ups” need to detach from that world as much as the kids, if not even moreso.
Technology has become almost a dark force in the world, gradually and systematically dehumanizing us on any number of levels.
A new consciousness needs to erupt, and awaken us all from our hypnotic trance induced not just by ephone technology, but a wariness of technology overall as it threatens to replace human creativity, imagination, thought, reason, and consciousness itself, as AI now brings an even greater threat to these God-given gifts to humanity.
Emily Brownlee’s testimony is brave, urgent, and heartbreaking—but let’s be honest: the institutions she's appealing to are not listening. In our capitalist system, where Big Tech has effectively bought the legislative branch, national tech policy has boiled down to “move fast and break things”—with no accountability. Don't hold your breath waiting for tech billionaires to endow the Stanford Center for the Prevention of Unintended Consequences of Technological Advances. Screens replaced books, pencils, and face-to-face learning not because research proved it was better for children, but because it was profitable. Schools became Silicon Valley profit centers, and children became captive markets.
There was no long-term research into how hours of screen time would affect students’ eyes, brains, or social development—because the goal was never educational excellence. It was data extraction, behavioral conditioning, and market expansion. The “one-to-one” device model isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of an emerging AI-dominated future that reduces human beings to distracted consumers, debtors, and data points. In that light, having kids arrive at school armed with phones full of social media, porn, games, and surveillance tools—and then spend the day on school-issued devices that facilitate cheating, isolation, and emotional dysregulation—isn’t a failure of the system. It is the system.
Brownlee is right: this isn’t the future of education. It’s the demise of it. But with AI advancing toward superintelligence, mass automation and the obsolescence of human labor, why would the architects of this economy care about kids’ developmental outcomes? What they’re getting now is exactly what they need: a generation trained in distraction, compliance, and shallow interaction.
Unless there’s mass resistance—led by parents, teachers, and local districts—the best we can hope for is to carve out small zones of sanity. The tech barons won’t save us. They built this machine, and our children are already in its gears.
Just finished working at a Catholic school in south Orange County that’s also a Microsoft Showcase school. They know full well that Microsoft’s policies are inverse to the Church’s values. Lord, have mercy on us.
Wow! This is powerful and to the point. Thanks for sharing this and thank you Emily for your testimony. I already shared it with other teachers.
It amazes me, as a former high school teacher, just how destructive technology has become in our educational system. I never was a supporter of open tech policies in school and I opposed the adoption of iPads for all students when our IT department was pressuring us to adopt them. I paid a price for that - the naysayer, the complainer, out-of-touch, you name it.
I will always support computer labs for teachers to take a class to and have them work on digital projects but never computers or smart phones anywhere, anytime, as you like it. They are destructive of not only learning but of the human person.
I witnessed this first hand and just today sadly remembered a former student, Andrew, who failed out of our school because of his addiction to video games. No matter what I did or his parents did to help him, we couldn’t get through and he spiraled downward day after day until I had no choice but to fail him.
Then the call came from none other than our College Guidance Counselor who wanted a work around for Andrew so that he didn’t fail as it would damage his college prospects. I was flabbergasted and angry. Where were you earlier in the semester when I was pleading for help for this boy?! You call me at the last possible moment to do something when I’m out of options. Finally, I had an insight and suggested he withdraw from the class as my class wasn’t necessary for college entrance requirements. This way he avoided an F on his transcript. And that was the solution.
I don’t fault the college counselor. He was as much in a bind as I and the boy’s parents were. There was no scaffolding in place to intervene early enough to make a difference. Besides, what would that scaffolding be and what resources would be needed to rescue every student sucked into tech addictions?
Andrew’s parents withdrew him from the school after his junior year because the financial cost for continued matriculation was exorbitant. I have no idea how things worked out for him but I still think about him and pray he’s doing well. I know I’m not the only teacher with such memories but the more plentifully positive ones do energize the soul.
Beautifully said! This is what the parents know and see....
The Big Bill in Congress today will give us 10 years of unregulated AI. Some will say but that is only if your state accepts the $25M broadband funds....I actually care about every state and every child. So this concerns me. We must say no to unregulated AI, and end the big untested EdTech experiment we are running.
EdTech, AI, and the full time 1:1 chrome book use in our schools are not helping our kids learn. AI should not replace reading and writing for kids. We are failing to protect children from data and privacy breaches, that are embedded within the business model of EdTech and AI, a topic few fully understand.
Everyone tells me we need to prepare our kids for the future workplace; that technology is inevitable. Research is showing that putting kids behind Chromebooks every day in every class is not helping them learn. Kindergartners do not need iPads. Global PISA scores show that we are falling behind. In fact, all this screen time filled with unfocused distractions is not neurologically appropriate for proper brain development. Scrolling, swiping, and gaming are not teaching our children the skills they will need to succeed in six to ten years when they graduate. School administrators like the tidy workflow that Edtech provides them. But at what expense to our future generations?
Children and teens do not need internet-connected devices for learning. Screens are distracting, unsafe, and ineffective for education. If states mandate online testing, return to a hard-wired computer lab model.
We need to prioritize smaller class sizes, printed textbooks, handwritten note taking, and hands on assignments. We should return to the century's old proven methods of learning. AI should not replace reading and writing for kids.
Finland and Sweden lead in K-12 education; they are ditching the 1:1 computers and returning to a hands-on textbook and handwriting personal learning experience in their classrooms.
Excellent statement. Reminds me of several important books I've read and taught about the fundamental challenges of these technologies -- Neil Postman's "Technopoloy" (which really pegs these changes as anthropologically "religious" in nature), Albert Borgmann's "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life" (identifying the destruction of "focal things and practices" as the primary damage technology can do), and Bill McKibben's "The Age of Missing Information," which pointed at the vastly different "reality" portrayed by media (cable TV in his book) vs. the natural world. His comparison helps one understand how the medium can damage one's empathy and understanding of nature and, in turn, nature itself.
So thrilled that Emily’s testimony made it over here to After Babel! When someone shared it in our SFCxUS group recently, I literally said that those 3 minutes of testimony needed to be shared far and wide… and now that’s happening. So thank you, Jon & Zach, for making that possible. And thank you, Emily, for continuing to stand up for our kids! 👏
This is amazing. She sums it up perfectly: "it’s alarming why I constantly have to prove with scientific research why this invasive technology is detrimental to our kids, when no one in the field of education can prove why it was introduced in the first place."
Just forwarded this to our school committee and superintendent.
And this is exactly why I never put my son in school and chose to homeschool. He has no free access to devices, and he's 12 now. His brain has to develop properly first. Otherwise, you are letting the screens rewire your kid's brain...permanently.
As to the whole false argument of coding and learning how to use tech - my son easily picks up coding b/c coding is simply logic. If a child is used to using some of their own critical thinking skills, they can learn anything, even how to use tech when they need to.
Too much screen time throughout childhood prevents the development of critical thinking skills, and you end up letting the tech control you, not you controlling the tech.
100%. That's why we did whatever we had to do, to give our three kids a Waldorf education, and had no television in the house the entire time they were growing up.
We have a tv in the house. But it can sit dark for weeks before we remember - oh yeah, let's have a family movie night. And even then, we are very deliberate in what we want to watch. Usually the movies are too long these days. I don't want to spend... uh..waste 2.5 hours of my day sitting still and watching something passively. How people can do this on the regular boggles me.
Sounds like your kids are really lucky...😊
How are you preparing him for the culture shock when the day inevitably arrives that he has to live among peers who were victims of public education?
That day in the future when he's probably one of the few critical thinking people of his generation.... he will rule over them! LOL. It's not like we live on an isolated island. He has plenty of public school friends thru various activities.... and he even comments how immature and brain-dead they act sometimes.
That is reassuring. Thanks!
It makes sense now why common core was a flop, it was intended to be a "loss leader" just like those nice avocados you see on sale when you first walk into the grocery store.
Silicon Valley execs know the tech is toxic, that's also why they opposed cell tower installs in Palo Alto as the infrastructure also reduces property values.
They know that the best education is hands on: https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/children
They also send their children to Waldorf schools. What more evidence does anyone need than that?
30 years in the classroom here, 5th grade to 12th, English and History, 7 different schools from Charter to private to public. Phone free schools are so fundamentally better than any kind of free- or semi-free range tech that it's mind-boggling why any Admin doesn't do it. (It's absurd to put enforcement on teachers alone, which is usually the case.)
BUT: Nobody, and it really is nobody, will stand up to what is just as self-evident even from this headline: "Silicon Valley Profit". The Tech companies and their responsibility. If the adults demonize the technology without addressing the real issue, namely the Social Media companies and their addiction algorithms, we reveal a confusing hypocrisy that negates our efforts as soon as students leave the classroom.
There's nothing inherently wrong with cellphones or what they provide; we adults wouldn't be doing this right here without them. Kids aren't stupid. If we frame the technology as inherently dangerous without demonstrating we're aware of both complications and responsibility, we lose all authority. This is what happens with alcohol and drugs all too often. But more significantly, by refusing to place most responsibility where it truly belongs - the social media platforms and their algorithms and content - we ultimately lose the battle because we're powerless to confront the real source of the harm. Not the phone itself, but the content being consumed and fed.
And the companies know this! They aren't in any way ignorant of it and have demonstrably proven again and again that they don't care. Even without the actual hard evidence, we know this simply because they claim either it's not their responsibility or that they are completely powerless.
And it's not like they have neither the finance nor expertise to act.
It truly is scary how blindly and gradually everyone was ushered into the e-phone world, where it now has veritably captured and consumed all our lives, not just our children’s.
Parents and “grown ups” need to detach from that world as much as the kids, if not even moreso.
Technology has become almost a dark force in the world, gradually and systematically dehumanizing us on any number of levels.
A new consciousness needs to erupt, and awaken us all from our hypnotic trance induced not just by ephone technology, but a wariness of technology overall as it threatens to replace human creativity, imagination, thought, reason, and consciousness itself, as AI now brings an even greater threat to these God-given gifts to humanity.
Emily Brownlee’s testimony is brave, urgent, and heartbreaking—but let’s be honest: the institutions she's appealing to are not listening. In our capitalist system, where Big Tech has effectively bought the legislative branch, national tech policy has boiled down to “move fast and break things”—with no accountability. Don't hold your breath waiting for tech billionaires to endow the Stanford Center for the Prevention of Unintended Consequences of Technological Advances. Screens replaced books, pencils, and face-to-face learning not because research proved it was better for children, but because it was profitable. Schools became Silicon Valley profit centers, and children became captive markets.
There was no long-term research into how hours of screen time would affect students’ eyes, brains, or social development—because the goal was never educational excellence. It was data extraction, behavioral conditioning, and market expansion. The “one-to-one” device model isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of an emerging AI-dominated future that reduces human beings to distracted consumers, debtors, and data points. In that light, having kids arrive at school armed with phones full of social media, porn, games, and surveillance tools—and then spend the day on school-issued devices that facilitate cheating, isolation, and emotional dysregulation—isn’t a failure of the system. It is the system.
Brownlee is right: this isn’t the future of education. It’s the demise of it. But with AI advancing toward superintelligence, mass automation and the obsolescence of human labor, why would the architects of this economy care about kids’ developmental outcomes? What they’re getting now is exactly what they need: a generation trained in distraction, compliance, and shallow interaction.
Unless there’s mass resistance—led by parents, teachers, and local districts—the best we can hope for is to carve out small zones of sanity. The tech barons won’t save us. They built this machine, and our children are already in its gears.
Excellent response
Shared it with my PTA board!
Just finished working at a Catholic school in south Orange County that’s also a Microsoft Showcase school. They know full well that Microsoft’s policies are inverse to the Church’s values. Lord, have mercy on us.
I wish we had an Emily Brownlee in every school district. Our district (South Orange/Maplewood NJ) needs her badly.
Thankfully our children finished high school in the nick of time (2014 for our youngest), but we are very concerned for our future grandchildren.
Yes! Agree 100%. Can I give this 100 likes?! 😊
I wrote an article on how the Lord of the Rings correlates with the smartphone. Thought this group may appreciate it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sacrasapientia/p/one-screen-to-rule-them-all?r=15hom4&utm_medium=ios
Wow! This is powerful and to the point. Thanks for sharing this and thank you Emily for your testimony. I already shared it with other teachers.
It amazes me, as a former high school teacher, just how destructive technology has become in our educational system. I never was a supporter of open tech policies in school and I opposed the adoption of iPads for all students when our IT department was pressuring us to adopt them. I paid a price for that - the naysayer, the complainer, out-of-touch, you name it.
I will always support computer labs for teachers to take a class to and have them work on digital projects but never computers or smart phones anywhere, anytime, as you like it. They are destructive of not only learning but of the human person.
I witnessed this first hand and just today sadly remembered a former student, Andrew, who failed out of our school because of his addiction to video games. No matter what I did or his parents did to help him, we couldn’t get through and he spiraled downward day after day until I had no choice but to fail him.
Then the call came from none other than our College Guidance Counselor who wanted a work around for Andrew so that he didn’t fail as it would damage his college prospects. I was flabbergasted and angry. Where were you earlier in the semester when I was pleading for help for this boy?! You call me at the last possible moment to do something when I’m out of options. Finally, I had an insight and suggested he withdraw from the class as my class wasn’t necessary for college entrance requirements. This way he avoided an F on his transcript. And that was the solution.
I don’t fault the college counselor. He was as much in a bind as I and the boy’s parents were. There was no scaffolding in place to intervene early enough to make a difference. Besides, what would that scaffolding be and what resources would be needed to rescue every student sucked into tech addictions?
Andrew’s parents withdrew him from the school after his junior year because the financial cost for continued matriculation was exorbitant. I have no idea how things worked out for him but I still think about him and pray he’s doing well. I know I’m not the only teacher with such memories but the more plentifully positive ones do energize the soul.
Beautifully said! This is what the parents know and see....
The Big Bill in Congress today will give us 10 years of unregulated AI. Some will say but that is only if your state accepts the $25M broadband funds....I actually care about every state and every child. So this concerns me. We must say no to unregulated AI, and end the big untested EdTech experiment we are running.
EdTech, AI, and the full time 1:1 chrome book use in our schools are not helping our kids learn. AI should not replace reading and writing for kids. We are failing to protect children from data and privacy breaches, that are embedded within the business model of EdTech and AI, a topic few fully understand.
Everyone tells me we need to prepare our kids for the future workplace; that technology is inevitable. Research is showing that putting kids behind Chromebooks every day in every class is not helping them learn. Kindergartners do not need iPads. Global PISA scores show that we are falling behind. In fact, all this screen time filled with unfocused distractions is not neurologically appropriate for proper brain development. Scrolling, swiping, and gaming are not teaching our children the skills they will need to succeed in six to ten years when they graduate. School administrators like the tidy workflow that Edtech provides them. But at what expense to our future generations?
Children and teens do not need internet-connected devices for learning. Screens are distracting, unsafe, and ineffective for education. If states mandate online testing, return to a hard-wired computer lab model.
We need to prioritize smaller class sizes, printed textbooks, handwritten note taking, and hands on assignments. We should return to the century's old proven methods of learning. AI should not replace reading and writing for kids.
Finland and Sweden lead in K-12 education; they are ditching the 1:1 computers and returning to a hands-on textbook and handwriting personal learning experience in their classrooms.
Excellent statement. Reminds me of several important books I've read and taught about the fundamental challenges of these technologies -- Neil Postman's "Technopoloy" (which really pegs these changes as anthropologically "religious" in nature), Albert Borgmann's "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life" (identifying the destruction of "focal things and practices" as the primary damage technology can do), and Bill McKibben's "The Age of Missing Information," which pointed at the vastly different "reality" portrayed by media (cable TV in his book) vs. the natural world. His comparison helps one understand how the medium can damage one's empathy and understanding of nature and, in turn, nature itself.