GRANVILLE COUNTY — Jared Cooney Horvath self-published 'The Digital Delusion' in December, igniting a national debate over the role of education technology in U.S. schools. The book links a yearslong decline in children’s standardized test scores to the widespread practice of providing every student with a laptop or tablet.
Horvath argues that students learn better using paper and through discussion, and that screen-based instruction harms children. He writes that decades of ed tech efforts to deliver personalized instruction have wasted time and money, and that AI adoption in schools 'signals institutional surrender.' In one passage, he states, 'EdTech isn’t failing because of outdated software or poor teacher training. It’s failing because it’s fundamentally incompatible with how human beings actually learn.'
Since its release, the book has been used by school administrators as guidance to reduce technology use, and parents have distributed copies at school board meetings. Administrators at Granville County Public Schools in North Carolina consulted the book when launching a 'tech-free' experiment that barred student laptop use two days a week. Parent coalitions from California to Maryland have hosted Horvath in webinars seeking advice on advocating for printed textbooks. Horvath also writes that daily computer use in school correlates with lower performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and that students who use computers for at least six hours a day score 66 points lower on PISA than students who do not use computers at all.
'There’s no way in hell my book has this big of an impact,' Horvath said, describing the book’s influence as giving voice to concerns already simmering among parents and educators. 'So my thought is it was there, it was fomenting, it was always about to happen. It’s just people needed the arguments, and I think that’s probably where the book kind of slid in and just said, ‘Here’s the word you’ve been looking for.’'
Supporters say the book lends credibility to their advocacy. 'As parents, we feel a lot of imposter syndrome sometimes when we’re talking about this,' said Jodi Carreon, a mother in San Diego and the national director of the advocacy group Schools Beyond Screens. 'So having a book written by someone with a background in education as well as neuroscience added a lot of credibility to what parents were experiencing.'
Critics, however, challenge Horvath’s conclusions. Richard Culatta, chief executive of ISTE+ASCD, said, 'It’s just a huge case of correlation and causation. He’s making a causation that doesn’t exist, and the reason this is so dangerous is that when you look at what’s going on, it’s actually far more likely that there are other things that are causing that.' Culatta added, 'I can’t tell you how many times I get a call in a week from a school leader who is freaking out about this and is going, ‘What do we do? How do we respond to this?’'