A new analysis shows the twin impacts of the leisure use of devices during the school day: declines in test scores and increases in feelings of loneliness at school.
Twenge is describing the surface phenomenon with good data: more leisure technology during the school day is associated with lower test scores and greater loneliness. But in your terms, the deeper issue is not simply that phones are “distracting.” It is that they alter the child’s interostate, fragment attention, reduce opportunities for embodied co-regulation, and keep the nervous system in a state of shallow, externally driven stimulation. What is being displaced is not just academic focus. It is the micro-stress/micro-reward cycle through which children learn to regulate themselves, relate to others, and build autonomy.
A response in your voice could read like this:
Jean Twenge is right to point to the correlation between device use in school, declining test scores, and rising loneliness. But I would go further. The problem with phones in schools is not merely that they distract from lessons. It is that they interrupt the biological conditions required for learning itself.
Learning is not just the transfer of information. It is a physiological process. A child must be in the right internal state before the cognitive systems can come online properly. When a child is constantly pulled toward the rapid, low-friction rewards of a phone, they are not practising sustained attention, social reciprocity, or the toleration of manageable challenge. They are being trained into a different equilibrium.
In the lunch hall, on the playground, and in the classroom, phones displace exactly the kinds of experiences children most need: conversation, boredom, rough-and-tumble negotiation, eye contact, play, conflict resolution, waiting, and the subtle emotional calibration that comes from being with other human beings. These are not peripheral to development. They are central to it.
So yes, phones lower academic performance. But that is only part of the story. They also weaken the child’s access to autonomy, relationship, and regulation. They make the school day less human. And a less human school day is bound to become a lonelier one.
If we are serious about education, then bell-to-bell phone bans are only the beginning. We should also be asking what kind of nervous systems our schools are cultivating. Are we creating environments that promote autonomic flexibility, social connection, and deep learning? Or are we allowing an architecture of interruption to shape the developing mind?
The real question is not whether devices are convenient. It is whether they are compatible with the kind of children, and the kind of society, we want to help bring into being.
I'm grateful that our school already prohibits phones. I do worry about edtech plus as you briefly but critically mentioned the access to school issued devices during school hours.
I am fortunate that for my fairly young child, teachers so far have taken an approach with edtech of only using as much as mandated by the district, but they still all have chromebooks. I hear, at least in other grades, of use of devices for games during indoor recess and free time, pragmatic with large class sizes but not ideal.
Glad to see your article; I read iGen prior to having kids and am glad the concerns have been since popularized.
Great piece. Helped create a documentary ’I am Gen Z’ couple of years back on the topic. Wait for the pushback from social media promoters ’correlation is not causation’. Internal studies already provided them with the evidence, but like Philip Morris et al and cigarettes inconvenient evidence that impacts profit margins is PR’d out of existence.
I was just looking at Hansard and provincial announcements on school phone rules, and it is striking how quickly policy is catching up to exactly this concern about loneliness and learning. Ontario’s new rules for 2024‑25 basically create “phone free” classrooms for K‑8, with limited access for older grades, and other provinces are piling on similar bans. To me, this is one of those rare moments where the research conversation and actual classroom rules in Canada are moving in sync.
It is a process of balance everyday. Teaching myself and my children the importance of both human connection and how to properly use technology so that one doesn’t become trapped in it.
Unfortunately it is not that simple. We now know the stronger correlation to declining test scores is with ed tech platform implementation and the piling on of more content without teaching the skills necessary to process effectively.
Excellent marshaling of data to support a critically important point. Face to face time beats FaceTime every time! Tech engagement does not fulfill the same human emotional needs as direct in-person social engagement.
Twenge is describing the surface phenomenon with good data: more leisure technology during the school day is associated with lower test scores and greater loneliness. But in your terms, the deeper issue is not simply that phones are “distracting.” It is that they alter the child’s interostate, fragment attention, reduce opportunities for embodied co-regulation, and keep the nervous system in a state of shallow, externally driven stimulation. What is being displaced is not just academic focus. It is the micro-stress/micro-reward cycle through which children learn to regulate themselves, relate to others, and build autonomy.
A response in your voice could read like this:
Jean Twenge is right to point to the correlation between device use in school, declining test scores, and rising loneliness. But I would go further. The problem with phones in schools is not merely that they distract from lessons. It is that they interrupt the biological conditions required for learning itself.
Learning is not just the transfer of information. It is a physiological process. A child must be in the right internal state before the cognitive systems can come online properly. When a child is constantly pulled toward the rapid, low-friction rewards of a phone, they are not practising sustained attention, social reciprocity, or the toleration of manageable challenge. They are being trained into a different equilibrium.
In the lunch hall, on the playground, and in the classroom, phones displace exactly the kinds of experiences children most need: conversation, boredom, rough-and-tumble negotiation, eye contact, play, conflict resolution, waiting, and the subtle emotional calibration that comes from being with other human beings. These are not peripheral to development. They are central to it.
So yes, phones lower academic performance. But that is only part of the story. They also weaken the child’s access to autonomy, relationship, and regulation. They make the school day less human. And a less human school day is bound to become a lonelier one.
If we are serious about education, then bell-to-bell phone bans are only the beginning. We should also be asking what kind of nervous systems our schools are cultivating. Are we creating environments that promote autonomic flexibility, social connection, and deep learning? Or are we allowing an architecture of interruption to shape the developing mind?
The real question is not whether devices are convenient. It is whether they are compatible with the kind of children, and the kind of society, we want to help bring into being.
Tech: Belzebub's Black Box of Demons.
Not to mention the brain cancer that is being caused by Wi-Fi, and mood changes induced by the magnetic field of these devices.
I'm grateful that our school already prohibits phones. I do worry about edtech plus as you briefly but critically mentioned the access to school issued devices during school hours.
I am fortunate that for my fairly young child, teachers so far have taken an approach with edtech of only using as much as mandated by the district, but they still all have chromebooks. I hear, at least in other grades, of use of devices for games during indoor recess and free time, pragmatic with large class sizes but not ideal.
Glad to see your article; I read iGen prior to having kids and am glad the concerns have been since popularized.
Great piece. Helped create a documentary ’I am Gen Z’ couple of years back on the topic. Wait for the pushback from social media promoters ’correlation is not causation’. Internal studies already provided them with the evidence, but like Philip Morris et al and cigarettes inconvenient evidence that impacts profit margins is PR’d out of existence.
How the learning is accomplished shapes its effectiveness. Here is one idea to improve both: https://pjwilk.substack.com/p/the-best-preparation-for-ai-is-a
I was just looking at Hansard and provincial announcements on school phone rules, and it is striking how quickly policy is catching up to exactly this concern about loneliness and learning. Ontario’s new rules for 2024‑25 basically create “phone free” classrooms for K‑8, with limited access for older grades, and other provinces are piling on similar bans. To me, this is one of those rare moments where the research conversation and actual classroom rules in Canada are moving in sync.
It is a process of balance everyday. Teaching myself and my children the importance of both human connection and how to properly use technology so that one doesn’t become trapped in it.
Unfortunately it is not that simple. We now know the stronger correlation to declining test scores is with ed tech platform implementation and the piling on of more content without teaching the skills necessary to process effectively.
Excellent marshaling of data to support a critically important point. Face to face time beats FaceTime every time! Tech engagement does not fulfill the same human emotional needs as direct in-person social engagement.