We Failed Our Kids With Good Intentions and Bad Tools

Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform their parents on nearly every cognitive measure we track — attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, and IQ. It happened on our watch, with our blessing, using tools we bought and called progress. Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath puts it plainly: when we put screens at the center of learning, learning goes down. Across 80 countries, widespread digital adoption in schools correlates with significant drops in student performance — and America's own NAEP data confirms it, with math and reading scores now at their lowest levels in decades. The question we should have been asking all along isn't "how do we use this tool?" It's "does this tool actually work?" The evidence says no. Our kids deserve better than a sales pitch dressed up as progress.