As a retired teacher, I feel I can attest to who benefits from a technology driven education. The teachers and the administration are under pressure to constantly provide progress data. When students' work is primarily on their computers, that can be achieved. It doesn't benefit the student but it reduces the workload of faculty. Education has devolved into statistical data and is no longer about creating a classroom of lifelong learners. It resembles an assembly line with machines creating identical models, only these are people, not automobiles.
I concur as a retired educator who was part of an ed-tech implementation that trained
our team, as content area specialists, to serve potential dropouts in a relationally supportive small-school context. We had a significant, positive impact over eight years. The tech-based courses were hit or miss (we ended up creating our own digital options). What WORKED was the teacher facilitation, offline support, required offline demonstrations of understanding, tight limits on assessment takes and retakes, flexibility and a seat-time waiver, cross-curricular service projects in our community…
Alas, powers at the district level determined they could get more bang for their buck by closing our teacher-led program and shifting the online courses back to the local high schools where these same types of students sit in a computer lab with a non-certified para-professional, no checks on preparation before assessments, unlimited “retakes” (notable that all assessment answers are available via Discord & Reddit) —> ever higher graduation rates.
The article is correct about one point: “no product-specific causal proof of harm” can serve as a convenient corporate standard when products evolve faster than research cycles. The problem arises in what it does next. It uses that procedural point to justify a substantive leap: from a specific type of social media risk (appearance manipulation, social comparison, engagement incentives) to a broad, catch-all category called “EdTech,” and then it treats that category as if it’s one exposure with a single mechanism.
“EdTech” is not a single entity. It encompasses calculators, audiobooks, text-to-speech, classroom projectors, learning management systems, adaptive tutoring, and high-stakes online testing. Some of these ease the learning process; some replace learning; some are neutral; and some can be harmful depending on age, usage, and what they substitute. If calculators are considered “technology in classrooms” (which they are), then the argument cannot simply be that “technology is damaging.” The real argument is that certain technologies, when used at developmental stages, in specific ways, can produce trade-offs. This is a different claim—one that needs definition and clarity.
The Utah NAEP story is presented as a “structural break” beginning around the introduction of a computerised assessment system. Even if the trendline description is accurate, the causal suggestion is not justified. A correlation between a statewide testing shift and later NAEP slopes does not identify the mechanism, and it does not distinguish school technology from the many other simultaneous changes that plausibly affect reading and maths: smartphones and social media saturation outside school, changes in reading habits, curriculum and standards adjustments, demographic change, teacher labour market dynamics, pandemic aftershocks beyond a single test year, and simple regression-to-the-mean after decades of improvement. If the claim is “classroom devices and platforms caused the decline,” you need evidence of exposure (time-on-device), substitution (what instruction was displaced), and a plausible pathway (attention fragmentation, reduced reading volume, reduced handwriting, weaker teacher-led instruction), ideally tested across multiple jurisdictions with appropriate controls. Without that, “converging evidence” is a rhetorical label applied to an under-specified hypothesis.
The ethics argument is also being used too broadly. It’s true that you often cannot run long, high-risk randomised trials in children. But that doesn’t justify collapsing categories and regulating by insinuation. Ethical limits should push policymakers toward better observational designs, clearer definitions, transparent procurement standards, and staged rollouts with measurable outcomes—not toward treating “digital” as the hazard.
If the author wants a defensible policy stance, it’s available without overreach. Shift the responsibility to vendors and districts to demonstrate durable, replicable benefits for instructional platforms before scaling. Require evaluations that measure not only short-term engagement but also learning transfer and retention. Limit entertainment-style features in student-facing products. Age-gate and minimise devices in early primary education where foundational skills are being automated internally. Protect time for reading, handwriting, and sustained attention. Maintain proven “utility tech” (calculators at the appropriate stage, accessibility tools like text-to-speech, assistive communication) precisely because the goal is learning, not a war on tools.
The article’s strongest point is opportunity cost. If districts spend heavily on platforms that don’t outperform well-implemented analogue instruction, that’s a serious policy failure. But “we wasted money” is not the same claim as “technology is damaging,” and it shouldn’t be conflated into one. A serious debate about schooling needs to discuss specifics: which tool, which age group, which dosage, what is being replaced, how it is measured, and compared to what alternative.
While I agree with your points generally, I think politically the only way to turn this ship around is to use the more harmful examples to scare constituents and lawmakers into giving a f***. School districts should be scared out of their minds that little Johnny accidentally sees something sexually graphic on his school-issued ipad, but instead there are literally no repercussions for these offenses or damage. The pendulum needs to swing all the way back before it could settle into some sort of balance. We need laws to protect kids from harmful content while they are at school, the same way we already have laws and systems in place to protect them from harmful behaviors and people.
This comment is on point. EdTech is way too broad a category for the argument made. I also worry about broad stroke 'bans' without causal evidence. I do think that schools can be thoughtful about what is beneficial and harmful and put measures in place especially as they apply to different ages or groups or even individual students that address technology that changes faster than research can study.
There also needs to be a gradual transfer of responsibility. The role of schools is too nuture and teach. If we remove that responsibility entirely as it relates to technology (something that students have access to outside of school walls) where will they learn in a safe environment? This is not an all or nothing topic. All technologies in schools are arrival technologies (Reich and Dukes) and as such we have a responsibility to help teach digital literacy through education and use.
While I appreciate the due diligence you and Kevin are demanding and agree that all arguments should be as solid as possible, I think you are missing the point.
I don't believe that "all or nothing" is the argument being made here. The issue is awareness. The apparent cause for alarm is due to the fact that it is already too late. Instead of nitpicking whether or not the "brush is too big", pay attention to the heart of what is being shared. As an educator for over 20 years, I can attest to "the kids are not alright" and tech dependence, yes, at home and at school, has clear implications for that diagnosis. What Horvath is arguing here is that we need to be intentional about what we expose our youngest citizens to, and we can't trust the creators of tech, ed, or otherwise, to be honest with us. Therefore, we must be vigilant. This isn't about whether calculators harm our students. This is about who we can trust in the realm of EdTech. Our children are too important not to take this seriously.
I don’t disagree with the urgency or the trust issue. Vendors don’t get to be the sole arbiters of what’s “safe” for children.
But I think this thread is still missing the upstream point.
The way I see it, we keep trying to locate “the villain” within a single downstream object (filters, apps, devices), when the deeper problem is the ecology that completes the child’s wiring. Cognition isn’t like haemoglobin — it’s a high Degrees-of-Constraint system that emerges inside stacked environmental constraints.
When that environment becomes non-negotiable, outcomes funnel, and prevalence can rise without the genome changing.
That’s why I’m wary of arguing purely at the “EdTech” level, especially when “EdTech” isn’t defined. Calculators, text-to-speech, locked-down assessments, open browsers, gamified engagement apps — these are not a single exposure with a single mechanism. If we don’t separate categories, “vigilance” becomes blunt policy theatre.
Reclaiming childhood means reclaiming the conditions the experience-expectant brain is waiting for: regulation, movement, co-regulation, language rhythm, touch, sleep, nourishment, safe stress and repair.
And in 2026, we also have to admit that childcare now occupies a large share of that attachment/regulation window for many children, so this can’t be treated as “just” a school IT issue.
So yes: enforce safeguarding on school devices as non-negotiable. But if we want genuine reversal rather than whack-a-mole, we have to look upstream at the attachment and regulation ecology that’s shaping children long before any specific platform does.
I agree with this response. EdTech is not a monolith. Some in fact do show positive outcomes. Others are neutral to learning. Some are negative. But to claim "EdTech" is harmful is like claiming "smartphone apps" are harmful while ignoring differentiation like group chats, ride shares, food delivery, social media, internet browsing, camera, flashlight, gps/maps, etc.
In fact, the SAGE program highlighted here is a testing platform that students engaged with once a year (usually). That does not seem like plausible cause for the downturn in scores. Other potential factors (besides the rise of smartphones at home)?
The common core curriculum was widely implemented around 2013. This caused major changing in curriculum, teaching materials, and teachers needed to 'relearn' parts of the content themselves as they were teaching it. Furthermore, the testing platforms all changed to reflect the new curriculum. It is expected that there is a momentary decline in scores as everyone adjusts to the new system, even if it is better in the long run. But we might not see longer term rebounds due to covid and short-form video apps that have eroded attention spans.
This reminds me of the 2013 talk Malcolm Gladwell gave at UPenn about the burden of proof to connect CTE and concussions suffered playing college football. When there is no agreed upon level of proof at which we will take action the result is an endless cycle demanding more evidence of harm. Whether that is inertia, learned helplessness, or simply that we desperately want to believe it only affects other people, far from ourselves it is hard to tell.
From what I have heard Zuckerberg and others in silicon valley send their children to traditional, tech free schools. If so, that is proof enough that he does not see any advantage in computors/screens as learning devices. At least not enough to entrust his childrens education with it. When harm can be proven it is already too late to rectify the damage of an entire generation or more.
Academia did the “no evidence of harm” trick with pornography too.
I won’t fail to bring this up under every single article about technology that I read, because we should have known these people were psychopaths by 1998.
Jared, your framing of the "no evidence of harm" defense as a procedural maneuver rather than a scientific one is sharp and important — and the Meta parallel is genuinely illuminating. The opportunity cost argument alone should end this debate.
But applying the Tension Transformation Framework surfaces a paradox your piece doesn't quite reach: both sides of this debate are operating from Victim identity, just pointed in opposite directions. EdTech lobbyists defend existing revenue streams by demanding impossible evidentiary standards. Regulators and critics respond by seeking to restrict and eliminate the technology. Both are Maladaptive responses — one protecting industry, one seeking political control — and neither redesigns the underlying system.
Here's the deeper irony: the very fragmentation that makes rigorous EdTech research nearly impossible — 13,000 procurement silos, no national learning infrastructure, no feedback loops between investment and outcomes — is itself the product of decades of Maladaptive and Reformist policy responses to prior educational tensions. We built a system structurally incapable of learning from itself, then expressed surprise when it couldn't learn from technology either.
Your Utah data is striking precisely because it points to an identity-strategy tension, not merely an external shock. The technology didn't fail the system. The system was already failing — and the technology faithfully reflected that failure back at us.
The Creative response isn't restricting EdTech or scaling it. It's redesigning the incentive architecture so that vendors are paid for demonstrated learning gains, not adoption. That exists nowhere at scale. Until it does, version 2.0 will perform exactly like version 1.0.
"No evidence of harm." They said that about tobacco. Let's hope that someday Mr. Zuckerberg and others of his ilk will have to open their purses the way Big Tobacco did.
I used to work for an educational publisher and discovered over the years that the field of education is exceedingly prone to fads. Every year a brand new technology or teaching technique promised the moon. I got pretty fed up after a while and tuned out all the latest innovations. I would routinely visit schools located in districts ranging from the richest to the poorest. One of them was a science class in a very small middle school in Brooklyn that had practically nothing in the way of equipment. I was shocked at how bare the classroom was. Yet the kids were extremely curious and enthusiastic and clearly loved their teacher.
"No evidence of harm" is also used by "Gender Affirming Care" providing cross/wrong-sex hormones and removing healthy body parts of our children in the name of gender ideology.
You stated, "When billions of dollars and millions of children are involved, the burden of proof should rest on demonstrating clear, durable, replicable benefit — not on proving harm after the fact.
Caution is not fear, and restraint is not regression. They are marks of a society that prioritizes children over products." This statement applies to the harm happening to our kids with a medicalization pathway that prioritizes cosmetic, irreversible medical interventions. Puberty blockers halt natural child development. "Gender medicine" will not examine the clear evidence of harm that is being exposed and will not admit that children cannot consent to altering their natural development.
Our society, focused on gender identity, has eliminated protective safeguards for our children and deflected in a similar manner as those who run social media platforms. I appreciate your article. Our advocacy is linked in the goal of protecting children and restoring their childhood free of the harms of social media and medical interventions upon their bodies. Both have long lasting and devastating effects.
How about we show the studies on what’s been lost? The fine motor skills and muscle development by tapping a screen vs writing by hand. The way tactile books and notes engage the brain in multiple feedback routes. The lost sense of place when we can’t orient on a map but just follow the arrow and the voice (per Duke professor A Dinnnon?). We shouldn’t “test for harm” but we can certainly show skills lost.
And it doesn’t mean tech doesn’t deserve a place… it’s amazing at supporting neurodivergent learners. But that support should be secondary, not first in line over thinking, feeling, doing… engaging with the wonder of the world.
This is such an important perspective, Jared. Especially the point about converging evidence vs. perfect causation. In small schools, we see firsthand how thoughtful choices around EdTech can support student learning and well-being, but over-reliance on untested platforms can quietly undermine both. It’s a good reminder that caution and intentional design are essential in classrooms at every scale.
Interactive Orthography - Where the EdTech debate may be missing the target
Jonathan and Jared,
I read EdTech is Borrowing Zuckerberg’s Playbook with real interest and appreciation. Your argument that technology should demonstrate durable learning benefit — not merely avoid proven harm — feels exactly right.
Much of what you describe resonates with what we have been observing for years: billions spent, minimal gains, and a steady pattern of digital tools that replicate existing instructional models rather than improve learning itself.
But reading your piece raised a question that may sit slightly outside the current EdTech debate:
What if the problem is not digital technology in education, but the reading interface that both paper and screens share?
Paper is itself a technology — one that assumes readers can effortlessly convert visual symbols into spoken language. NAEP results across decades suggest that a large proportion of students never fully master that conversion process. This pattern long predates classroom computers.
In that sense, digital tools may have disappointed not because technology is inherently harmful, but because we have been optimizing the wrong layer of the system.
Most EdTech attempts to digitize instruction — lessons, exercises, and assessments — while leaving the underlying reading interface unchanged.
The result is predictable: the same cognitive burdens, now delivered electronically.
There may be another path.
David Boulton’s work at Learning Stewards focuses on improving the reading interface itself rather than digitizing instruction. Interactive Orthography provides optional, on-demand perceptual support at the word level inside normal text. Readers remain inside the text, and assistance appears only when decoding friction interrupts comprehension.
Nothing is gamified.
Nothing competes for attention.
Nothing attempts to replace teachers or reading.
In many ways, the design principle is the opposite of what you describe in your article: the technology disappears as soon as it is no longer needed.
If most EdTech attempts to replace reading, this approach attempts to remove the hidden friction that prevents many people from becoming fluent readers in the first place.
Your work emphasizes developmentally aligned technology and the importance of protecting attention and learning. It seems possible that carefully designed reading-interface tools may be one place where technology can genuinely serve those goals.
At minimum, it may represent a category that sits outside the usual EdTech vs. analog debate.
If this strikes you as interesting, I would value a short exchange of ideas.
As a retired teacher, I feel I can attest to who benefits from a technology driven education. The teachers and the administration are under pressure to constantly provide progress data. When students' work is primarily on their computers, that can be achieved. It doesn't benefit the student but it reduces the workload of faculty. Education has devolved into statistical data and is no longer about creating a classroom of lifelong learners. It resembles an assembly line with machines creating identical models, only these are people, not automobiles.
I concur as a retired educator who was part of an ed-tech implementation that trained
our team, as content area specialists, to serve potential dropouts in a relationally supportive small-school context. We had a significant, positive impact over eight years. The tech-based courses were hit or miss (we ended up creating our own digital options). What WORKED was the teacher facilitation, offline support, required offline demonstrations of understanding, tight limits on assessment takes and retakes, flexibility and a seat-time waiver, cross-curricular service projects in our community…
Alas, powers at the district level determined they could get more bang for their buck by closing our teacher-led program and shifting the online courses back to the local high schools where these same types of students sit in a computer lab with a non-certified para-professional, no checks on preparation before assessments, unlimited “retakes” (notable that all assessment answers are available via Discord & Reddit) —> ever higher graduation rates.
The article is correct about one point: “no product-specific causal proof of harm” can serve as a convenient corporate standard when products evolve faster than research cycles. The problem arises in what it does next. It uses that procedural point to justify a substantive leap: from a specific type of social media risk (appearance manipulation, social comparison, engagement incentives) to a broad, catch-all category called “EdTech,” and then it treats that category as if it’s one exposure with a single mechanism.
“EdTech” is not a single entity. It encompasses calculators, audiobooks, text-to-speech, classroom projectors, learning management systems, adaptive tutoring, and high-stakes online testing. Some of these ease the learning process; some replace learning; some are neutral; and some can be harmful depending on age, usage, and what they substitute. If calculators are considered “technology in classrooms” (which they are), then the argument cannot simply be that “technology is damaging.” The real argument is that certain technologies, when used at developmental stages, in specific ways, can produce trade-offs. This is a different claim—one that needs definition and clarity.
The Utah NAEP story is presented as a “structural break” beginning around the introduction of a computerised assessment system. Even if the trendline description is accurate, the causal suggestion is not justified. A correlation between a statewide testing shift and later NAEP slopes does not identify the mechanism, and it does not distinguish school technology from the many other simultaneous changes that plausibly affect reading and maths: smartphones and social media saturation outside school, changes in reading habits, curriculum and standards adjustments, demographic change, teacher labour market dynamics, pandemic aftershocks beyond a single test year, and simple regression-to-the-mean after decades of improvement. If the claim is “classroom devices and platforms caused the decline,” you need evidence of exposure (time-on-device), substitution (what instruction was displaced), and a plausible pathway (attention fragmentation, reduced reading volume, reduced handwriting, weaker teacher-led instruction), ideally tested across multiple jurisdictions with appropriate controls. Without that, “converging evidence” is a rhetorical label applied to an under-specified hypothesis.
The ethics argument is also being used too broadly. It’s true that you often cannot run long, high-risk randomised trials in children. But that doesn’t justify collapsing categories and regulating by insinuation. Ethical limits should push policymakers toward better observational designs, clearer definitions, transparent procurement standards, and staged rollouts with measurable outcomes—not toward treating “digital” as the hazard.
If the author wants a defensible policy stance, it’s available without overreach. Shift the responsibility to vendors and districts to demonstrate durable, replicable benefits for instructional platforms before scaling. Require evaluations that measure not only short-term engagement but also learning transfer and retention. Limit entertainment-style features in student-facing products. Age-gate and minimise devices in early primary education where foundational skills are being automated internally. Protect time for reading, handwriting, and sustained attention. Maintain proven “utility tech” (calculators at the appropriate stage, accessibility tools like text-to-speech, assistive communication) precisely because the goal is learning, not a war on tools.
The article’s strongest point is opportunity cost. If districts spend heavily on platforms that don’t outperform well-implemented analogue instruction, that’s a serious policy failure. But “we wasted money” is not the same claim as “technology is damaging,” and it shouldn’t be conflated into one. A serious debate about schooling needs to discuss specifics: which tool, which age group, which dosage, what is being replaced, how it is measured, and compared to what alternative.
While I agree with your points generally, I think politically the only way to turn this ship around is to use the more harmful examples to scare constituents and lawmakers into giving a f***. School districts should be scared out of their minds that little Johnny accidentally sees something sexually graphic on his school-issued ipad, but instead there are literally no repercussions for these offenses or damage. The pendulum needs to swing all the way back before it could settle into some sort of balance. We need laws to protect kids from harmful content while they are at school, the same way we already have laws and systems in place to protect them from harmful behaviors and people.
Don’t use AI to leave comments please.
Are you suggesting that mathematicians abandon calculators or architects abandon CAD? Perhaps we should focus on the message.
This comment is on point. EdTech is way too broad a category for the argument made. I also worry about broad stroke 'bans' without causal evidence. I do think that schools can be thoughtful about what is beneficial and harmful and put measures in place especially as they apply to different ages or groups or even individual students that address technology that changes faster than research can study.
There also needs to be a gradual transfer of responsibility. The role of schools is too nuture and teach. If we remove that responsibility entirely as it relates to technology (something that students have access to outside of school walls) where will they learn in a safe environment? This is not an all or nothing topic. All technologies in schools are arrival technologies (Reich and Dukes) and as such we have a responsibility to help teach digital literacy through education and use.
While I appreciate the due diligence you and Kevin are demanding and agree that all arguments should be as solid as possible, I think you are missing the point.
I don't believe that "all or nothing" is the argument being made here. The issue is awareness. The apparent cause for alarm is due to the fact that it is already too late. Instead of nitpicking whether or not the "brush is too big", pay attention to the heart of what is being shared. As an educator for over 20 years, I can attest to "the kids are not alright" and tech dependence, yes, at home and at school, has clear implications for that diagnosis. What Horvath is arguing here is that we need to be intentional about what we expose our youngest citizens to, and we can't trust the creators of tech, ed, or otherwise, to be honest with us. Therefore, we must be vigilant. This isn't about whether calculators harm our students. This is about who we can trust in the realm of EdTech. Our children are too important not to take this seriously.
I don’t disagree with the urgency or the trust issue. Vendors don’t get to be the sole arbiters of what’s “safe” for children.
But I think this thread is still missing the upstream point.
The way I see it, we keep trying to locate “the villain” within a single downstream object (filters, apps, devices), when the deeper problem is the ecology that completes the child’s wiring. Cognition isn’t like haemoglobin — it’s a high Degrees-of-Constraint system that emerges inside stacked environmental constraints.
When that environment becomes non-negotiable, outcomes funnel, and prevalence can rise without the genome changing.
That’s why I’m wary of arguing purely at the “EdTech” level, especially when “EdTech” isn’t defined. Calculators, text-to-speech, locked-down assessments, open browsers, gamified engagement apps — these are not a single exposure with a single mechanism. If we don’t separate categories, “vigilance” becomes blunt policy theatre.
Reclaiming childhood means reclaiming the conditions the experience-expectant brain is waiting for: regulation, movement, co-regulation, language rhythm, touch, sleep, nourishment, safe stress and repair.
And in 2026, we also have to admit that childcare now occupies a large share of that attachment/regulation window for many children, so this can’t be treated as “just” a school IT issue.
So yes: enforce safeguarding on school devices as non-negotiable. But if we want genuine reversal rather than whack-a-mole, we have to look upstream at the attachment and regulation ecology that’s shaping children long before any specific platform does.
I agree with this response. EdTech is not a monolith. Some in fact do show positive outcomes. Others are neutral to learning. Some are negative. But to claim "EdTech" is harmful is like claiming "smartphone apps" are harmful while ignoring differentiation like group chats, ride shares, food delivery, social media, internet browsing, camera, flashlight, gps/maps, etc.
In fact, the SAGE program highlighted here is a testing platform that students engaged with once a year (usually). That does not seem like plausible cause for the downturn in scores. Other potential factors (besides the rise of smartphones at home)?
The common core curriculum was widely implemented around 2013. This caused major changing in curriculum, teaching materials, and teachers needed to 'relearn' parts of the content themselves as they were teaching it. Furthermore, the testing platforms all changed to reflect the new curriculum. It is expected that there is a momentary decline in scores as everyone adjusts to the new system, even if it is better in the long run. But we might not see longer term rebounds due to covid and short-form video apps that have eroded attention spans.
Excellent points. And, a very effective proposal - require evidence of improvement before scaling EdTech items.
Our message needs to be loud and clear: "Stop experimenting on the kids!"
There doesn't need to be a study to prevent tech use, there needs to be studies to allow it.
This reminds me of the 2013 talk Malcolm Gladwell gave at UPenn about the burden of proof to connect CTE and concussions suffered playing college football. When there is no agreed upon level of proof at which we will take action the result is an endless cycle demanding more evidence of harm. Whether that is inertia, learned helplessness, or simply that we desperately want to believe it only affects other people, far from ourselves it is hard to tell.
From what I have heard Zuckerberg and others in silicon valley send their children to traditional, tech free schools. If so, that is proof enough that he does not see any advantage in computors/screens as learning devices. At least not enough to entrust his childrens education with it. When harm can be proven it is already too late to rectify the damage of an entire generation or more.
Academia did the “no evidence of harm” trick with pornography too.
I won’t fail to bring this up under every single article about technology that I read, because we should have known these people were psychopaths by 1998.
Jared, your framing of the "no evidence of harm" defense as a procedural maneuver rather than a scientific one is sharp and important — and the Meta parallel is genuinely illuminating. The opportunity cost argument alone should end this debate.
But applying the Tension Transformation Framework surfaces a paradox your piece doesn't quite reach: both sides of this debate are operating from Victim identity, just pointed in opposite directions. EdTech lobbyists defend existing revenue streams by demanding impossible evidentiary standards. Regulators and critics respond by seeking to restrict and eliminate the technology. Both are Maladaptive responses — one protecting industry, one seeking political control — and neither redesigns the underlying system.
Here's the deeper irony: the very fragmentation that makes rigorous EdTech research nearly impossible — 13,000 procurement silos, no national learning infrastructure, no feedback loops between investment and outcomes — is itself the product of decades of Maladaptive and Reformist policy responses to prior educational tensions. We built a system structurally incapable of learning from itself, then expressed surprise when it couldn't learn from technology either.
Your Utah data is striking precisely because it points to an identity-strategy tension, not merely an external shock. The technology didn't fail the system. The system was already failing — and the technology faithfully reflected that failure back at us.
The Creative response isn't restricting EdTech or scaling it. It's redesigning the incentive architecture so that vendors are paid for demonstrated learning gains, not adoption. That exists nowhere at scale. Until it does, version 2.0 will perform exactly like version 1.0.
"No evidence of harm." They said that about tobacco. Let's hope that someday Mr. Zuckerberg and others of his ilk will have to open their purses the way Big Tobacco did.
I used to work for an educational publisher and discovered over the years that the field of education is exceedingly prone to fads. Every year a brand new technology or teaching technique promised the moon. I got pretty fed up after a while and tuned out all the latest innovations. I would routinely visit schools located in districts ranging from the richest to the poorest. One of them was a science class in a very small middle school in Brooklyn that had practically nothing in the way of equipment. I was shocked at how bare the classroom was. Yet the kids were extremely curious and enthusiastic and clearly loved their teacher.
"No evidence of harm" is also used by "Gender Affirming Care" providing cross/wrong-sex hormones and removing healthy body parts of our children in the name of gender ideology.
You stated, "When billions of dollars and millions of children are involved, the burden of proof should rest on demonstrating clear, durable, replicable benefit — not on proving harm after the fact.
Caution is not fear, and restraint is not regression. They are marks of a society that prioritizes children over products." This statement applies to the harm happening to our kids with a medicalization pathway that prioritizes cosmetic, irreversible medical interventions. Puberty blockers halt natural child development. "Gender medicine" will not examine the clear evidence of harm that is being exposed and will not admit that children cannot consent to altering their natural development.
Our society, focused on gender identity, has eliminated protective safeguards for our children and deflected in a similar manner as those who run social media platforms. I appreciate your article. Our advocacy is linked in the goal of protecting children and restoring their childhood free of the harms of social media and medical interventions upon their bodies. Both have long lasting and devastating effects.
How about we show the studies on what’s been lost? The fine motor skills and muscle development by tapping a screen vs writing by hand. The way tactile books and notes engage the brain in multiple feedback routes. The lost sense of place when we can’t orient on a map but just follow the arrow and the voice (per Duke professor A Dinnnon?). We shouldn’t “test for harm” but we can certainly show skills lost.
And it doesn’t mean tech doesn’t deserve a place… it’s amazing at supporting neurodivergent learners. But that support should be secondary, not first in line over thinking, feeling, doing… engaging with the wonder of the world.
This is such an important perspective, Jared. Especially the point about converging evidence vs. perfect causation. In small schools, we see firsthand how thoughtful choices around EdTech can support student learning and well-being, but over-reliance on untested platforms can quietly undermine both. It’s a good reminder that caution and intentional design are essential in classrooms at every scale.
Thanks for this. I sent this article to our schools administrators because they are skipping happily down the path of Ed tech. 👎
Interactive Orthography - Where the EdTech debate may be missing the target
Jonathan and Jared,
I read EdTech is Borrowing Zuckerberg’s Playbook with real interest and appreciation. Your argument that technology should demonstrate durable learning benefit — not merely avoid proven harm — feels exactly right.
Much of what you describe resonates with what we have been observing for years: billions spent, minimal gains, and a steady pattern of digital tools that replicate existing instructional models rather than improve learning itself.
But reading your piece raised a question that may sit slightly outside the current EdTech debate:
What if the problem is not digital technology in education, but the reading interface that both paper and screens share?
Paper is itself a technology — one that assumes readers can effortlessly convert visual symbols into spoken language. NAEP results across decades suggest that a large proportion of students never fully master that conversion process. This pattern long predates classroom computers.
In that sense, digital tools may have disappointed not because technology is inherently harmful, but because we have been optimizing the wrong layer of the system.
Most EdTech attempts to digitize instruction — lessons, exercises, and assessments — while leaving the underlying reading interface unchanged.
The result is predictable: the same cognitive burdens, now delivered electronically.
There may be another path.
David Boulton’s work at Learning Stewards focuses on improving the reading interface itself rather than digitizing instruction. Interactive Orthography provides optional, on-demand perceptual support at the word level inside normal text. Readers remain inside the text, and assistance appears only when decoding friction interrupts comprehension.
Nothing is gamified.
Nothing competes for attention.
Nothing attempts to replace teachers or reading.
In many ways, the design principle is the opposite of what you describe in your article: the technology disappears as soon as it is no longer needed.
If most EdTech attempts to replace reading, this approach attempts to remove the hidden friction that prevents many people from becoming fluent readers in the first place.
A short demonstration of the interface is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zN09xBjgJ8&t=1s
It’s only a couple of minutes long.
Your work emphasizes developmentally aligned technology and the importance of protecting attention and learning. It seems possible that carefully designed reading-interface tools may be one place where technology can genuinely serve those goals.
At minimum, it may represent a category that sits outside the usual EdTech vs. analog debate.
If this strikes you as interesting, I would value a short exchange of ideas.
Warm regards,
Douglas Burdon
dougburdon@gmail.com
that is the saddest picture i’ve seen all day
As we say in medicine: “lack of proof is not proof of lack“