SAN FRANCISCO, 6 February – The mesmerising addiction of staring into screens has “rewired” the brains of young people. And, those screens have stoked a mental health crisis, globally.
Children are less cognitively capable than parents were at their age. Since standardising and measuring cognitive development, which began in the late 1880s, every generation has outperformed their parents.
Higher intelligence, until this present moment, has been attributed to spending more time at school. Learning at school helps develop cognition.
Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform the previous generation, the millennials, on every cognitive measure, from attention to memory, to literacy, to numeracy, to executive functioning, to IQ, even though they spend more time at school than previous generations.
So, what occurred around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development?
It can’t be the schools. Schools look and function the same. Nor human biology, because it hasn’t changed that rapidly. Rather, it’s the tools that children are using at schools to learn.
This staggering trend is highly apparent across 80 countries. That is, once a country adopts digital technology as the primary mode of learning, performance goes down.
Children that use computers five hours per day at school for learning will score significantly less than those who rarely or never look into screens at school to learn.
When technology enters education, learning goes down.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: How do human beings learn?
Learning, it turns out, is a biological process. Hence, it’s not that the technology isn’t being used effectively, or that teachers are not trained thoroughly enough, or that better computer programs are needed.
The answer is: Humans are mammals, and we have evolved to learn from other human beings, not from screens. Screens circumvent the biological process that’s hardwired within our brains.
In addition, screens at school have thwarted handwriting. Pen to paper stimulates thinking and cognitive development. It improves memory and recall of words – the bedrock of literacy.
Handwriting’s power stems from the complexity of the process. It harnesses different brain systems that must work in concert to reproduce shapes of letters in our head onto the page. Handwriting is amongst the most complex motor skills that the human brain is capable of.
Holding a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task. It requires the brain to constantly monitor the pressure each finger exerts on the pen. Then your motor system has to delicately modify the pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head onto the page.
If children are not receiving handwriting training and practising, which is important brain stimulation, their brains won’t reach full potential.
Clearly, terminating learning from screens is the answer. Instead, bring back pens, notebooks and teachers to create an inspirational learning environment.
Last but not least, spending 60 minutes each day outside in green spaces, without any electronic devices, boosts children’s mental health and wellbeing, reduces anxiety and stress, and it improves cognitive function – important, effective solutions.
Reduce. Repair. Reuse
Reese Halter is a bees/trees/seas defender.
Unearthly Wails is a special edition, a collection of poetry
illustrated by renowned Ojibwa artist Terry McCue.
Email: HalterBooks@gmail.com to order
