TRIGGERnometry - ＂We’re Regressing Into The Unknown＂ - Dr Jared Cooney Horvath

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00:01:00.000 what do we know about the mechanics of how screens and what we see on screens affects

00:01:08.520 our brains it's exactly what you would expect none of it is great a parent asked her when should

00:01:14.160 I give my kid a cell phone and her response was when are you ready for them to watch porn

00:01:17.780 that will be that's gonna be the first thing they do when they figure that machine that's a great

00:01:22.380 answer one of the things I found absolutely shocking this generation of children are

00:01:27.500 cognitively inferior to their parents' generation,

00:01:31.760 and you associate that with screening.

00:01:33.540 Yeah, and there's no easy way to say it.

00:01:36.560 50% of kids have a special plan

00:01:38.780 that gives them extra bonus time to help them

00:01:40.740 because they have a learning disorder,

00:01:42.220 typically an attentional disorder.

00:01:43.380 50%?

00:01:44.300 You can have what's called induced ADHD,

00:01:46.640 where basically you act as though you have it,

00:01:49.440 but you genuinely do not.

00:01:51.740 Over half of our kids are on a computer

00:01:53.540 one to four hours every day for learning.

00:01:55.660 Imagine I had a drug.

00:01:56.940 I invented a new drug.

00:01:58.060 And you say, what does that drug do?

00:01:59.280 And I go, why don't you give it to your kids

00:02:01.380 and we'll find out.

00:02:05.240 Jared, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:06.940 Thank you so much.

00:02:07.820 We're so looking forward to the conversation

00:02:09.380 because the things you talk about, in our view,

00:02:11.820 are really important.

00:02:13.440 Before we get into them,

00:02:14.760 tell us a little bit about your background.

00:02:16.880 What's your story?

00:02:17.740 How have you come to do what you do

00:02:20.060 and say what you say?

00:02:21.080 Yeah, well, similar to Francis,

00:02:22.880 I was a teacher originally.

00:02:24.300 So teaching was my passion,

00:02:25.520 but i got into neuroscience um because when i was teaching that was a decade of the brain

00:02:30.960 so everything was brain books brain gym brain this so i figure all right that must be the next

00:02:35.840 evolution so i'll go learn that stuff bring it back to my classroom thinking that'd be a year or

00:02:39.600 two that has ballooned into 18 years now i've been stuck in academia i can never quite get out

00:02:44.960 but my whole focus has been yeah on the science of learning how do human beings learn can we bring

00:02:49.040 that back to schools and say if this is learning then what does that mean for teaching what does

00:02:52.720 What does that mean for studying for the tools we use?

00:02:55.120 And the way I came across your work is a friend of the show sent me a clip of you on C-SPAN,

00:03:00.640 I think it was.

00:03:01.640 I think you were testifying in Congress?

00:03:03.640 Yeah, I think it was Senate, one of those.

00:03:05.640 Senate, right, yeah.

00:03:06.640 Well, yeah, Senator Cruz was there, actually, I remember now.

00:03:10.000 And you were talking about the impact of screen time and screens on children, on learning,

00:03:16.780 and on their brains.

00:03:17.780 things I found absolutely shocking, but also kind of made sense to me is that this generation of

00:03:24.380 children are cognitively inferior to their parents' generation. And likewise, whereas prior to now,

00:03:32.700 every generation basically got cognitively better. Actually, we're now seeing a decline.

00:03:37.500 And you associate that with screens. Yeah. And there's no easy way to say it. Like,

00:03:41.860 you've got to find the nicest way to say that sentence that the next, our kids are cognitively

00:03:46.680 less developed than we are but it is just where it is so since we've been recording cognitive

00:03:52.680 development turn of the century late 1800s into the 1900s hundreds every generation outperforms

00:03:58.840 their parents you name it on basic iq memory attention literacy numeracy and we always

00:04:04.040 attributed that to school that the more kids spent time in schools the more their general

00:04:09.880 competencies went up and it makes sense that's where we're cutting our teeth and then 2010 rolls

00:04:14.600 around, and all of a sudden, schooling and development decouple. Kids today spend more

00:04:20.180 time in schools than we did growing up, but all of their scores are down lower than ours.

00:04:25.060 They're now, they're equivalent to us in about 1992 now, in literacy, in numeracy, in executive

00:04:32.140 functioning. All these things have gone down. And you can't say, look, school didn't change

00:04:36.700 all that much. Biology didn't change all that much. So what changed? It was the stuff we were

00:04:40.820 putting in schools, the screens that they were now being taught through seem to be having a big

00:04:45.220 impact on that. That's so depressing because what we're actually talking about is we're going

00:04:52.940 backwards as a species. Yeah. And some people say, look, going backwards is fine because if you

00:04:58.180 just take general IQ, right? Our generation, we have about 130 IQ compared to our great

00:05:04.500 grandparents, 100 IQ. So if you slice it one way, that means half of us are geniuses or

00:05:10.400 slice it the other way, half of our great-grandparents were mentally decrepit.

00:05:14.020 Of course that doesn't make sense. So you've got to recognize what we've been developing

00:05:20.060 through IQ isn't general intelligence. It's a real specific kind of intelligence that we'll

00:05:23.780 call schoolability, or almost like a scientific conceptual way of viewing the world. Our

00:05:28.240 grandparents were very physical. If it didn't matter to me and my farm and my immediate

00:05:32.760 surrounding, they didn't need to know it. We have a much broader view. So as kids start to

00:05:37.380 of regress back somebody made the argument well maybe they're getting better at physical stuff

00:05:41.140 they're just going back to what our great-grandparents were doing have you hung out with

00:05:45.780 young kids the one thing they are not is hyper physical so it's not that we're going back in a

00:05:50.820 good way we're kind of regressing into a an unknown where i don't see any real benefit or

00:05:56.660 growth to what they're doing anything better than what anyone else has been doing and how much of

00:06:00.100 this is due to the lack of a concentration span i i would there's where you're going to get your

00:06:06.100 correlation is a lot of people think their concentration their attention is kind of going down

00:06:11.620 realistically if you go into labs it's not that far down and you could say that probably came

00:06:17.940 after a lot of the tech stuff so here's an interesting kind of fact so if you take how

00:06:23.860 long a kid spends on a screen this is an average 8 to 18 year old across the us per year they will

00:06:28.980 spend about 450 hours every year learning from a screen which is massive that's way more than most

00:06:34.180 people think but they will also use that exact same screen to passively consume rapidly switching

00:06:39.780 media for over 2 500 hours every single year so basically it's just straight training if all

00:06:47.460 you're doing is using a tool with the attention economy constantly flipping constantly jumping

00:06:52.500 now i sit you in front of that tool and say time to focus and learn you make it about six minutes

00:06:57.060 till you go back to open a tab look at this it's like pavlov's dog so i don't think their attention

00:07:03.540 span cause anything, I think we've basically ruined their attention span by the tool we're

00:07:08.000 using. Get rid of the tool. They can still sit there for three hours and watch a movie if they

00:07:12.080 have no distractions. They can still read if they learn how to do it. We're just not teaching that

00:07:17.020 anymore. And how much of it, you mentioned that it's about what we're doing in school. Is it about

00:07:22.060 that? Or is it also, as you say, what we're doing outside of it? I mean, I had literally, to me,

00:07:28.640 it was probably one of the most shocking things I've seen with my own eyes in recent years.

00:07:33.540 I took my son to a playground near where I live,

00:07:36.300 and he was going up and down on the slide.

00:07:39.860 And there was a kid next to him with his grandfather

00:07:42.220 who literally would not even put his phone down,

00:07:46.200 which he had in his hand playing the same stupid game or something.

00:07:49.940 I don't know, maybe like a five, six-year-old.

00:07:52.100 He would go down the slide while staring at his phone.

00:07:55.300 Could not pull it away.

00:07:57.860 That's where you...

00:07:58.940 School used to be seen as a unique context.

00:08:01.660 Um, there's a teacher up in Canada named Andrew Cantor-Rudy.

00:08:05.560 He calls it the walled garden.

00:08:07.060 We're very similar to, like, a hospital or a movie theater.

00:08:10.260 The context sets your expectations.

00:08:12.800 And if you don't heavily control the context,

00:08:15.100 don't be surprised when people don't meet your expectations.

00:08:18.180 So school used to be that safe zone

00:08:20.020 where whatever you were doing out there,

00:08:21.440 at least here, we got hard rules.

00:08:23.680 But then this weird thing started happening

00:08:25.080 where we tried to make school more like the real world.

00:08:27.820 Well, if kids are doing that out there,

00:08:29.780 then surely they should be doing it in here as well.

00:08:32.460 And once that bleed started to happen,

00:08:34.040 so I think you're right,

00:08:34.620 it's going to be a mix between the outside

00:08:36.420 and the inside world of school.

00:08:38.380 And really the problem is the more the inside of the school

00:08:41.580 tries to mimic the real world for whatever reason,

00:08:43.720 and we could talk about digital literacy and jobs and stuff,

00:08:47.120 that's where now those behaviors out on the playground

00:08:49.960 we're seeing in a classroom as well.

00:08:51.740 If you can't even focus long enough to slide,

00:08:54.200 good luck trying to learn chemistry or algebra.

00:08:56.000 And what do we know about the mechanics of how screens and what we see on screens affects our brains, and especially children's brains?

00:09:04.820 It's exactly what you would expect. None of it is great.

00:09:09.340 The fun thing about the brain is it's wickedly malleable.

00:09:13.240 The thing that makes our brain powerful is it's constantly changing.

00:09:15.840 So if you read books really deeply, your brain will change to make sure you can sustain focus.

00:09:21.300 so basically just whatever a kid is doing on a screen it's a good rule of thumb that the brain

00:09:26.480 will now start to seek that out it will adapt and say that must be normal give me more of that

00:09:31.720 um it's it's it's all malleable we can push it back if we choose to but if you then want to kind

00:09:37.220 of go deeper i think some of the more interesting stuff is like the relationship side of things

00:09:41.120 when we interact live in a person like right now if we're getting along our bodies will release a

00:09:46.020 certain set of chemicals one is which is oxytocin we call that kind of a bonding chemical you see

00:09:50.740 when people are breastfeeding, you see it when people are making love, when they're interacting.

00:09:54.420 When kids interact online, their bodies don't release oxytocin. They're more likely to release

00:09:59.540 tachykinins. So that's a completely different chemical. This chemical leads to depression.

00:10:04.980 That's a marker of isolation. So it's a real good sign that human biology does not appear to

00:10:10.580 recognize digital communication as a form of actual interaction. It recognizes it as isolating

00:10:16.660 and threatening now if i'm a kid spending more and more time online feeling more and more lonely

00:10:22.260 what do i do i reach out to more people online thinking that's going to be the cure and

00:10:27.080 realistically the poison starts to cycle so you get emotional disturbances you get bodily disturbances

00:10:32.120 um in your country um sophie winkelman she's kind of like my counterpart in the uk wonderful

00:10:36.740 she talks about all the physical changes your home hormones changes your bone structure

00:10:41.460 More kids today are myopic than at ever any other point in history.

00:10:47.160 And you can act surprised and say this is all correlational.

00:10:51.560 You can actually have a real discussion and say, well, something's changed and it's not books or something else.

00:10:57.140 Well, it's something that kind of is obvious.

00:10:59.820 Like we are here in the U.S. now.

00:11:02.240 My wife and son are back in the U.K.

00:11:04.320 I miss them.

00:11:05.020 I talk to them on the phone and it's just not the same thing.

00:11:08.100 Right? I kind of, like, we do it because we want to keep in touch.

00:11:11.900 But you don't feel the same way having a Zoom call with somebody

00:11:14.380 as you do sitting down face-to-face.

00:11:15.900 And even on the device, you know, as fathers,

00:11:18.040 all I want to do is call my daughter.

00:11:19.760 But on that machine, my brain is also thinking about,

00:11:22.900 should I check my mail while I'm here?

00:11:24.260 Should I do all this? And it's just killer.

00:11:26.400 But I think another interesting thing, if you drive learning,

00:11:30.040 there's a concept called empathy.

00:11:31.860 Everyone's heard of empathy.

00:11:33.620 Empathy is a key driver of learning.

00:11:35.380 So that's where a lot of people think, well, cool,

00:11:36.940 We want teachers who are empathetic.

00:11:39.240 But the joke is, is empathy isn't a trait.

00:11:41.640 It's not an emotion.

00:11:43.180 It's not a thing that you have.

00:11:44.680 It's a resonance between two biologies.

00:11:47.280 If you and I start to empathize, it's a measurable thing.

00:11:50.020 What's going to happen is our heart rates

00:11:51.420 are going to start to beat simultaneously.

00:11:53.360 We're going to breathe at the same rate.

00:11:54.760 We're going to blink at the same time.

00:11:56.960 Empathy is resonance.

00:11:58.600 And when you're resonating, now I'm in your head.

00:12:00.960 So that's why it's so easy to learn from you.

00:12:02.740 I'm making the same moves you are.

00:12:04.840 on a screen it is ridiculously difficult to get resonance so if i'm talking to someone on a phone

00:12:11.480 with a screen versus in person it's real hard to sync up to them that's why zoom learning during

00:12:15.960 covet was just didn't work as well and so then a lot of people said well get rid of the teacher

00:12:20.520 just go right onto ai or something well look if i need two pairs of biology to to resonate

00:12:26.440 and i it's hard to do it over a screen getting rid of the other person and just having a tool

00:12:30.600 there is no more biology for me to resonate with that's why dropout rates online are about 85 as

00:12:35.800 soon as a kid starts struggling online there's no sense of momentum no sense of connection

00:12:41.880 they just drop out go to the next thing and the great irony in all of this is the social media

00:12:48.040 in particular has said to us this is the best way of staying connected yeah wasn't that the

00:12:53.000 sales pitch all along was this was going to bring the world together what's the one thing it did it

00:12:57.720 just drove a wedge right between everyone it makes you feel lonely isolated and it gives you

00:13:03.080 and you could bring that back to learning too it gives you the echo chamber you're not hearing the

00:13:08.440 breadth of the world you're hearing your little slice of it and that's great i mean to be fair

00:13:14.600 i like these kind of videos or i like these kind of things it's not a horrible problem but it really

00:13:19.000 isn't opening my perspective to anything new so much as it's just locking me down to what i

00:13:23.320 already know. And also, let's be honest, social skills, you have to practice them. You have to,

00:13:29.320 unfortunately, sometimes say an awkward thing. People look at you, go, Francis, what were you

00:13:34.460 thinking when you said that? And eventually, over time, you kind of learn not to do that.

00:13:39.800 Do you see? But you see what I mean? And you see some of these Gen Z kids, particularly in our

00:13:44.400 space, in the political space, and the way they talk to each other and the way they talk to people

00:13:49.600 who are old enough to be their father or their grandfather i find horrific to be honest they

00:13:55.080 talk to each other including face to face the way people talk to each other on social media

00:14:01.220 yeah that's all that's happening right i just had one of those yesterday where there's a young

00:14:05.700 researcher talking to me about all this stuff and and i my only response was i i appreciate the

00:14:11.000 confidence mate i'm i'm waiting for that wisdom give it two decades because that's not how you

00:14:18.140 actually interact with someone that you've never met before that you're trying to have a discussion

00:14:21.820 with and there was a so i was in australia for 12 years and it's exactly that is kids weren't

00:14:28.160 learning in primary years how to line up to go to the bathroom how to raise your hand to ask a

00:14:33.300 question these are all that we don't come into the world born with this you've got to experience it

00:14:36.720 and you've got to fail at it you got to get in trouble a couple times before you start to really

00:14:40.640 lock it down with digital technology we just don't do that everyone's kind of got their free-for-all

00:14:45.700 So they brought in somebody from the UK to come in and teach behavioral skills.

00:14:51.240 Man, Australia almost kicked him out.

00:14:53.020 They tried to ban him.

00:14:54.360 They were calling his methods draconian.

00:14:56.260 How dare you teach my kids routines and structure?

00:14:59.380 But that is how you develop executive function.

00:15:01.500 That's how you learn to run this and interact with those in a meaningful way.

00:15:06.300 And we just, so go to these schools now where it's AI all day, every day.

00:15:10.140 Don't be shocked if your kid doesn't know how to talk to somebody to order at McDonald's

00:15:14.320 or to actually go up to a till and buy some clothing.

00:15:17.900 They're not prepared for that kind of stuff.

00:15:19.780 And then that really nicely segues us

00:15:22.960 into the kind of mental health aspect of this conversation.

00:15:25.720 Because I talk to a lot of Gen Zs

00:15:28.040 and at first I was like taking the piss.

00:15:31.580 Like, yo, what is it?

00:15:32.660 You find a phone call anxiety-inducing.

00:15:35.380 But a lot of them really do.

00:15:37.180 Without practice.

00:15:39.240 How do you get resilience?

00:15:41.640 It's forged through fire.

00:15:43.160 How do you get understanding is you've got to fail. Look at a kid learning to walk.

00:15:47.960 How often are they on their bum? That's part of the process.

00:15:51.760 If you don't ever let your kids fail or struggle, none of these skills kind of come out.

00:15:56.460 So my wife, she's a psychologist. She went to Nepal to help women with female empowerment and resilience.

00:16:06.280 She calls me about three days into the trip. She's like, these women need resilience training about as much as I need another handbag,

00:16:12.220 which is to say I don't and it's because they might not know the word they might not have been

00:16:16.420 taught it but my god they live it all day if they didn't have it they wouldn't be here right now

00:16:20.640 and then schools start to say well instead of actually forging resilience through interaction

00:16:26.040 with other kids and maybe there's bullying involved maybe you become a bully at some point

00:16:29.440 we teach them about resilience we teach them about well-being without ever putting them in a

00:16:34.980 situation where they have to actually experience it and so you're just left with these kind of

00:16:38.320 stunted people can i tell you this is a story no one believes me when i say this but it's very true

00:16:42.560 remember how like i haven't been in mcdonald's in years have you been there recently for chance

00:16:46.800 you're not missing out um it's they have kiosks now so you can't order to a person you got to

00:16:52.240 actually do a buttony thing i got no time for that so i went up to the counter and waited till

00:16:57.040 the person came and i ordered from them and i guess all the kiosks then were broken because

00:17:01.440 a kid came up to me and said can you help me do what order why just use the kit no the kiosk's

00:17:07.760 not working. Can you help me? What do I do? I'm like, what do you do to ask for food to and from

00:17:12.300 another person? And the same thing, like I'm part of me is going, what is wrong with you? But the

00:17:16.240 other part of me is, no, you've probably never actually practiced ordering food from another

00:17:20.660 person. And you're willing to ask me for help, which is lovely. I'm grateful. But man, that's

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00:19:11.260 But one of the things in previous years, if there was a child, for instance, in my class who wasn't

00:19:18.660 able to do the very basic things like that yeah or wasn't able to cope in those very very ordinary

00:19:27.420 run-of-the-mill situations we would talk about they weren't raised properly or even the word

00:19:33.320 neglect might be used because you're being neglectful as a parent because you're not

00:19:37.640 parenting your child and you're not preparing them for life yeah so australia banned social media

00:19:44.300 and i was just down there last month so i got to get the kind of inside scoop on how it's all going

00:19:49.940 schools are fine with it teachers great principals great kids great the biggest pushback has been

00:19:55.400 from parents because parents are saying what do i do with my kid oh yeah like they're just not

00:20:01.020 trained now in parenting i guess when you've offloaded your whole childhood and now cool i

00:20:07.280 can take you to a museum but what am i going to do the other five days of the week with my kid

00:20:10.900 And that scares the daylights out of me.

00:20:12.820 There was a survey done with Girl Scouts here in the U.S.

00:20:17.300 And one of the questions was, how frequently does your parents' use of tech interfere with your ability to connect with them?

00:20:24.560 And over 60% said all the time, frequently.

00:20:28.500 And so that's where, yeah, I think as parents, we've kind of lost our way in that structure to say, look, school isn't babysitting.

00:20:35.620 School isn't there to teach your kids morality or ethics.

00:20:38.200 maybe it is at some level fine but that is your job as a parent to raise your kid we're here to

00:20:44.120 teach them context we're here to teach them skills and understanding we're not here to tell them

00:20:50.600 what's right and wrong and if you're not willing to do that as a parent that becomes really tricky

00:20:54.600 yeah and look i i feel for parents you're you're a dad i'm a dad like i remember her so my wife

00:20:59.960 as i always say she's a complete screen nazi and we we took a flight from london to florida

00:21:05.000 for vacation it's a 10 hour flight and we don't do screens right and so we're sitting here there's a

00:21:12.360 family with a kid similar age over there he's on the screen all for 10 hours and we're entertainment

00:21:17.500 here you know what i mean it's difficult and and once it's become part of your life as a parent

00:21:22.600 then it's even more difficult for a lot of people to be like well how am i gonna not let my kid be

00:21:27.920 on the same devices that i'm on all the time yeah and what we found is we actually had to

00:21:32.420 be conscious about not using devices in front of our son so that we could then he so then he didn't

00:21:39.100 have the idea that it's what people do yeah and it's it's all that structure and how hard is i'm

00:21:43.340 same as you we're trying our damnedest to make sure our kid doesn't see it but you just get

00:21:47.940 into that routine and every once in a while i find myself on my phone with my daughter there i'm like

00:21:51.480 that's okay this no it's it's it's not what am i training her to do that anytime you're

00:21:55.960 uncomfortable anytime there's a lull pull something out and get entertained and that's so

00:22:00.280 what are we teaching to them as well but here's another like maybe a little bit of a counter

00:22:04.840 argument i i as i think i mentioned before we started i i love video games i've been playing

00:22:08.840 video games since i was a kid yeah and i think if i added up the total number of hours i spent

00:22:13.880 on video games it'd be quite a lot and if i put that time into other things it'd be quite productive

00:22:19.720 but i'm okay i've done all right with my life but what i have found actually is if i'm playing like

00:22:25.160 a historical video game about stuff i've actually learned a lot from video games and it sparked my

00:22:31.080 interest to go and then read about this particular medieval period that i'm playing the game about

00:22:34.920 and whatever and i wonder whether the ai teaching is gamifying learning in a way that might actually

00:22:43.160 be quite productive is that possible or are you skeptical about no yay and nay i i i completely

00:22:49.080 respect that you like you play assassin's creed and you're like man rome was cool let me learn

00:22:52.920 more about room right totally understand that the percentage of people doing that are going to be

00:22:56.920 very slim but the ones for the ones that it works for absolutely gamification was one of ed tech's

00:23:03.240 biggest mistakes was so games work via addiction basically we want to keep your attention on a

00:23:11.720 screen and so the official metric would be called engagement but engagement is not synonymous with

00:23:17.400 learning you can be wildly engaged there have been movies like superhero movies you're wildly engaged

00:23:21.960 with couldn't tell me anything about it two days later and then sometimes you're less engaged like

00:23:26.740 a hard movie like affliction or schindler's list you're not as engaged it's not easy to watch but

00:23:30.760 because of the thinking you're doing throughout it the discussions you're having you remember a

00:23:34.760 ton about it two decades later so engagement is not the right metric but when we gamify something

00:23:40.380 what happens is we end up focusing on the mechanics of the game how does the game work so i always

00:23:45.940 say my example is always oregon trail so i grew up i'm part of the oregon trail generation

00:23:50.260 To this day, I can tell you everything about that game.

00:23:53.140 I know which buttons to press to shoot.

00:23:55.000 I know where to go to find bear instead of rabbits, how to ford a river.

00:23:57.880 I got it.

00:23:59.200 Only recently did somebody tell me that was meant to be a history lesson.

00:24:02.460 That wasn't a game.

00:24:03.320 That was supposed to be a lesson for kids to learn the Oregon Trail.

00:24:07.140 Mate, I couldn't tell you anything about the Oregon Trail today.

00:24:10.220 I don't know who did it, when it happened, where it went.

00:24:12.660 I probably ended in Oregon.

00:24:14.240 That's my best guess.

00:24:15.680 But the reason was because I was focused on the mechanics

00:24:18.540 rather than the content of the game.

00:24:20.660 Now, as you explain that and I think about gaming,

00:24:23.340 I go, sure, I will read about a historical figure afterwards.

00:24:26.980 But if I think about a thousand hours I spent playing this game,

00:24:30.900 they were spent on exactly what you're talking about.

00:24:32.760 Which button did you press? How do you jump off this?

00:24:34.920 That's the Duolingo issue, by the way.

00:24:36.820 So somebody just did research comparing Duolingo,

00:24:39.500 which is gamified, to Babel,

00:24:41.880 which is a non-gamified learning app.

00:24:43.340 and I do not get funding from anyone.

00:24:45.080 This is just research.

00:24:46.480 And they found people use Duolingo

00:24:48.700 about two times more than Babbel,

00:24:50.720 but they learn less.

00:24:52.640 So for every hour on Babbel,

00:24:54.160 you're spending two over here,

00:24:55.260 yet somehow you're learning less

00:24:56.760 than in that hour over here.

00:24:58.120 And it's just because you're focused on

00:24:59.060 how do I get my bird a little bow tie

00:25:00.980 or whatever, how do I get the high score?

00:25:02.700 It keeps you engaged,

00:25:03.960 but it doesn't necessarily focus you on the content.

00:25:06.080 Use our code TRIG to get a discount

00:25:07.980 on the Babbel subscription.

00:25:10.420 That's horrible, I know.

00:25:12.340 We'll have to cut to have that research out.

00:25:14.000 No, no, no, that's it.

00:25:15.660 Generic language app.

00:25:17.200 No, no, no.

00:25:18.300 I was just kidding.

00:25:19.540 Go ahead, Mike.

00:25:20.680 But I'm really glad you used the word addiction

00:25:22.880 because when it comes to phones,

00:25:25.640 it really feels like addiction.

00:25:28.620 One of my friends, he's got three young boys,

00:25:30.660 and he goes to meet Francis.

00:25:31.820 When I take the tablet away from them,

00:25:34.200 it's like I'm taking heroin away from a junkie.

00:25:38.060 They lose their minds.

00:25:39.520 and these are well brought up well behaved boys and you know they're doing a great job in parenting

00:25:44.720 and they have tablet hour once every every sunday yeah but he said when tablet hour is over and then

00:25:52.440 they try and take the tablet away from the kid he goes it's it's like withdrawal symptoms it's

00:25:58.340 it was with tv for when we were growing up i remember my mom saying every time i turn off

00:26:02.520 the tv you would flip out and it was like all right here gets comes a 30 minute meltdown

00:26:06.140 But it is addiction. It doesn't look like it. It literally is a physiological addiction.

00:26:12.040 So what happens is, here's how addictions basically break down.

00:26:15.840 Every addiction starts with a cue. Something has to grab your attention.

00:26:18.840 So let's say my phone dings. That's an attention grabber.

00:26:21.360 But cues can also be internal. I feel uncomfortable. I just woke up. I got to go to the bathroom.

00:26:27.180 In response to a cue, you can now undertake an action to try and resolve it.

00:26:31.120 So if my phone dings, I look at it. Sweet.

00:26:33.500 If you resolve a cue with an action,

00:26:35.700 your brain will give you a hit of dopamine.

00:26:37.240 You're going to feel good.

00:26:38.320 There's your reward.

00:26:39.380 So cue, action, reward.

00:26:40.640 Cue, action, reward.

00:26:41.440 That's kind of the cycle.

00:26:42.700 Now, what happens, you do that enough times in a row,

00:26:45.920 your brain's not stupid.

00:26:47.120 Eventually, it's going to preempt you.

00:26:48.320 You're going to go cue, ding, and your brain's going to say,

00:26:50.360 I know what's coming.

00:26:51.960 And it's going to spit the dopamine out

00:26:53.720 before you've done any action.

00:26:55.740 So here's the trick.

00:26:56.900 When you get dopamine after you've done an action,

00:26:59.080 it feels really good.

00:26:59.960 You get that exact same chemical before you've done an action.

00:27:03.060 it no longer feels good. It feels like a craving. Now it feels like an urge. Now you have to do the

00:27:08.980 action just to calm your system down and get a sense of relief. So once you've moved from cue

00:27:13.560 action reward to cue reward action, you've built a habit cycle. You've built an addiction. And now

00:27:19.500 you are forced to behave in a way just to regain homeostasis. So that's all technology is trying

00:27:25.440 to do. They don't even hide it anymore. There was a time when tech people were like, we're trying to

00:27:29.580 be altruistic we're here for the people we love you and now they don't even kid they're like we're

00:27:33.940 gonna pay the highest salaries to uh psychologists in history of the world just to build habit cycles

00:27:40.120 on our machines so when you take it away and the kid gets the cue whether it's discomfort or

00:27:45.480 my mom talked to me and they don't have that action that they can go to the dopamine ramps

00:27:51.300 they get worse and worse and worse they get more uncomfortable you get yourself a meltdown so it's

00:27:55.540 very much a trackable addiction cycle and it's not just i remember we did uh sex ed classes

00:28:02.020 because i taught year six that's 10 and 11 year olds yeah and it was very much about you know

00:28:07.140 how to protect yourself etc etc and one of the parents said to me i don't want my child attending

00:28:13.520 these classes uh because i'm religious i don't agree with it and i said okay fine uh but your

00:28:20.020 child has an iphone he goes yeah so what i went well what do you think he's watching on that iphone

00:28:25.520 he went what do you mean i went you can access literally hours and hours and hours thousands if

00:28:31.840 not millions of hours of hardcore pornography on that you think your son hasn't seen that and he

00:28:35.840 went he just couldn't believe it isn't that trippy you like best arguments i was someone from seattle

00:28:43.120 emily emily shurkin a parent asked her when should i give my kid a cell phone and her response was

00:28:47.440 when are you ready for them to watch porn that will be that's gonna be the first thing they do

00:28:52.080 when they pick up that machine that's a great answer i mean i didn't just we're all the same

00:28:56.160 but now now imagine so bring that exact device now into a school and so how do we learn learning

00:29:02.560 requires deep focus and sustain i've now put something in front of you that you have spent

00:29:08.880 thousands of hours doing nothing but addictive cycles porn having fun and now i say okay 40

00:29:13.600 minutes let's learn it's no wonder kids make it on average about six minutes before they start

00:29:19.280 going off task. And it's just a pure training thing. I always say, man, if you assume it takes

00:29:23.680 10,000 hours to master anything, whether or not that's accurate, who knows? Within four years of

00:29:28.540 being introduced to a screen, kids have mastered basically messing around on it, not sitting down

00:29:34.960 and learning. And now when we bring ed tech into schools and we're like, tech, we'll teach them

00:29:38.460 how to learn. That is giving them heroin and saying, can you use this heroin to learn about

00:29:44.060 weights and measures? Well, technically you could, but I don't think anyone is actually going to do

00:29:48.880 that. You could use beer to learn about buoyancy, but an alcoholic probably isn't going to learn

00:29:54.160 fluid dynamics from it. It's the same problem with tech in schools. Absolutely. And then you get onto

00:29:59.520 the issues of things like ADHD, where we have all of these kids being diagnosed with ADHD and you go,

00:30:06.160 all right, I guess I understand that some children will have this disorder, but the amount of kids

00:30:11.980 that we have and how much of that is kids going on TikTok. I mean, if TikTok doesn't give you

00:30:17.860 ADHD, then you're probably not a human being. And it gets shorter and shorter. We used to have

00:30:23.060 at least two minutes was kind of the average interaction with tech. That's now about 40

00:30:27.560 seconds is now the average interaction before you go to the next thing with tech. I get in a lot of

00:30:32.020 trouble when I talk about ADHD. So I'm going to be very, very measured in what I say here.

00:30:37.600 There is genuine ADHD and that ADHD, we can track, we can treat it with medication. We know what's

00:30:43.920 going on 50 of kids do not have that yet that's about the diagnostics in most districts around

00:30:51.080 the u.s 50 of kids have a special plan that gives them extra bonus time to help them because they

00:30:56.060 have a learning disorder typically an attentional disorder 50 that's not not all of them will have

00:31:00.940 the diagnostic of adhd some will get an asd diagnostic some will get a tactile but 50 have

00:31:06.600 some special treatment most of it is going to be attentional and the trick with adhd is this oh

00:31:12.500 gosh you can have what's called induced adhd where basically you act as though you have it

00:31:19.300 but you genuinely do not and we can tell by based on how medication is going to interact with you

00:31:24.820 if you have biological adhd nine times out of ten about well eight and a half times out of ten

00:31:29.940 the medication will treat the symptomology we know we're dealing with something real

00:31:35.300 in the real world if i give the majority of people who are demonstrating adhd medication

00:31:40.420 they will just ramp up it doesn't help them it makes it a little bit worse which is a sign you

00:31:44.100 didn't actually have it you were acting as if you had it and then you gave them speed and then we

00:31:48.420 gave him speed now we gave him coke which makes it even more fun and then and so you you go why

00:31:53.860 do we act like we have adhd it's that have you so we have what's called our threshold basically adhd

00:31:59.540 is measured by a threshold your brain there's too much stuff hitting your brain at any one moment

00:32:04.020 you can't take it all in so your brain has a hard limit that says cool anything above this you can

00:32:08.260 pay attention to anything below this we're not even going to process adhd is marked by having

00:32:13.460 a very high threshold almost nothing gets into their brain so that's why you get that real

00:32:17.780 flitting behavior when it's there it's it's above my threshold but then it's gone and then it's a

00:32:21.860 bird and now it's gone and now it's here and now it's gone just nothing is breaking through

00:32:25.940 so you give them speed and what happens is just same as us their threshold lowers it just started

00:32:31.140 staying high that when it lowers it lowers into a more normal level now they can sustain focus

00:32:35.620 but we set our threshold to our context if i'm in a very quiet spot where nothing is coming in

00:32:41.700 i can set my threshold real low if i'm in a hyper noisy crazy place without any problem i will set

00:32:48.940 my threshold high just to block all the extra noise out that's what we're doing as a society

00:32:53.640 i pumped gas earlier today there was an advertisement on the gas pump saying something

00:32:59.580 to me i'm like i can't even have this minute to myself all right what do you want me to buy

00:33:02.860 There is so much going on that just naturally we've all set our threshold so high that we're acting as though we have ADHD, but we genuinely don't.

00:33:11.340 So what can we do in schools? Reset the threshold. Just make the context of school much calmer.

00:33:16.260 We can start to get rid of it. But instead, we're going to give them screens in schools, which is going to say there's nothing louder or noisier than a screen.

00:33:22.660 So you're going to set your threshold high when you play with it.

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00:35:21.740 One of the things Francis and I have been discussing is, like, education is the least sexy subject for us to talk about on the show, literally ever.

00:35:33.240 And Catherine Burblesing, who's the headmistress of Michaela School in London, she kind of drilled this point into me pretty aggressively.

00:35:41.840 But I went to visit the Michaela School.

00:35:44.480 And the day I turned up, there were two police officers at the gate, inside the door.

00:35:50.440 and her school is known for its strict discipline so I don't know what's going on here and it turned

00:35:54.800 out on that day I know sorry the day before a school right next door which has the same sourcing

00:36:01.260 pool they're not selective school they get kids from the same inner city area that Catherine

00:36:05.280 school there was a kid who was being bullied or we don't know went into that school stabbed two

00:36:10.480 kids while shouting ala akbar then ran to a mosque and was crying there and has been arrested and

00:36:15.320 whatever and then you go into her school and the kids are learning they're incredibly well behaved

00:36:20.260 they're very patriotic even though from the very very very mixed backgrounds lots of first

00:36:25.060 generation immigrant families there etc they all love britain you know sing the anthem all

00:36:29.380 all of that stuff and it just points out to you how important education is but for some reason

00:36:34.900 like we i think as a society we just don't get it and we were talking this morning about like

00:36:40.500 trying to work out where that was and i think partly it's because we kind of a in a lot of

00:36:44.340 people's minds i think education is just day case like where you shove your kids so you can go to

00:36:48.100 work yeah another thing is i think we kind of all assumed that education is broadly speaking the

00:36:53.460 same as it was when we were there you know um and for some reason just this issue just doesn't it

00:36:58.980 doesn't resonate yeah and why and i we all have experience with it too and i think a lot of us

00:37:03.940 look back on our own schooling go oh that sucked or that wasn't fun so who cares and i think you're

00:37:08.820 right it's it's the most important yet less least sexy thing you could possibly talk about and i

00:37:14.420 When we think back to our own schooling, believe it or not, oddly enough, we were in school during the golden era.

00:37:21.900 If you were in school basically from around 98 to about 2008, 96 to 2008, in that window there, you didn't know it, but you were hitting home runs.

00:37:31.380 Everything about school, that was when more kids were succeeding, more kids with the gender gaps were closing, racial gaps were closing, more kids had access to it.

00:37:39.620 That was it.

00:37:41.080 But it still wasn't fun.

00:37:43.260 and that's where people think learning should be fun right working out isn't fun sometimes when you

00:37:49.080 need to move your biology in a new direction which learning is you're forcing your biology

00:37:53.760 to reinterpret the world around you it's a slog it ain't easy it needs structure now it doesn't

00:37:59.360 mean it can't be fun it just means it's not going to be fun 24 7 but i think what by bringing in

00:38:04.300 tech now so when we went to school i think just think of tech we had a typing class once a week

00:38:09.900 and Word class once a week

00:38:13.080 where they taught us how to use MS Word and paint

00:38:14.820 and all that stuff.

00:38:16.220 Today, kids are spending, in the U.S. right now,

00:38:18.400 over half of our kids are on a computer

00:38:20.060 one to four hours every day for learning,

00:38:22.380 and over a quarter are four or more hours

00:38:26.220 every single day on a screen.

00:38:28.360 So the whole structure has kind of shifted in there.

00:38:32.040 And with that, then, has kind of come

00:38:33.740 a very big change of meaning.

00:38:35.300 So why would some schools,

00:38:37.480 we're talking about, like, school crises, right?

00:38:39.660 When was the last time you heard a school crisis in military schools?

00:38:43.520 They don't exist.

00:38:44.540 Last time you heard a crisis in an art school?

00:38:46.940 They don't exist.

00:38:48.040 Or a religious school?

00:38:49.980 Don't exist.

00:38:50.600 Why?

00:38:50.840 Because they have a very clear reason for existing.

00:38:53.620 They know the type of person they are trying to build.

00:38:56.160 That's what education is.

00:38:57.300 It's not there to serve a society.

00:38:59.160 What do you need?

00:38:59.860 We'll make sure the kids can do that.

00:39:01.300 It's there to build a society.

00:39:02.540 What do we desire?

00:39:03.880 That's what we are going to create.

00:39:05.740 But public schooling, by and large, has become a service industry.

00:39:08.280 we've forgotten who we are trying to create what kind of society we want to build so we just ask

00:39:13.380 the world what do you want workers and what are we doing all we think about education is will it

00:39:17.980 get my kid a job i got no problem getting kids jobs no yeah well and i'm happy to to talk jobs

00:39:25.700 but believe me i've been a teacher for a long time i don't know what any of my kids do for a job

00:39:29.480 except for one he worked in my lab there you go i know what one of my kids do i don't care there's

00:39:33.620 not a teacher in the world who cares about work we care about the person what is the in so if a

00:39:38.880 school has a very clear understanding we're here to create a uk citizen we're here to create an

00:39:44.060 american citizen what does that mean now we have a goal now we align according to that well and

00:39:48.940 that's i fear has become quite difficult for political reasons nowadays because there's so

00:39:53.260 much partly perhaps due to the social media driving people apart it just feels like even saying you

00:39:59.840 know we're trying to make american citizens now there's half the country that's going to think

00:40:03.300 that's somehow evil or oppressive or whatever right yeah and that that's scary if you can't

00:40:07.940 even talk about helping create a unified society because i mean what's what's the point i always

00:40:13.860 say interesting thing about the brain we do not all live in the same world for a long time we

00:40:20.280 had this debate do we all live in the same world we just describe it differently or do we all live

00:40:24.160 in very different worlds and we now are very much falling on this side where what you see what you

00:40:29.600 taste, what you hear is very different than what somebody else will see, taste, hear in the exact

00:40:34.020 same context. So we don't take the world in clean. We're constantly just creating it up here.

00:40:39.580 So give me a million kids as kindergartners. They're all going to come in with completely

00:40:44.180 different stories. Isn't the job of a public education at some level to unify all of them

00:40:50.060 under a single comprehensive narrative so that we can all live in the same basic world together?

00:40:55.840 we don't gotta agree on everything but at least there is one narrative so we're all

00:41:00.080 tasting the same stuff we're all smelling the same things at least in this context and that's

00:41:05.760 what i think you're going to see in the u.s especially school is going to become smaller

00:41:10.000 and smaller and smaller i think it went from local communities were controlling the school

00:41:15.200 to then districts to states a little bit of federal touched in and now i think you're going

00:41:19.200 to see it swing way back where we're going to say look if we can't do this at a national level we

00:41:23.120 we can't do it at a state level, we'll just do it at a local level. And we will drive our own

00:41:26.420 curricula in this community here. Talking about schools, this has sparked a memory in me. I

00:41:32.600 remember in 2010, interestingly enough, I went for a job as a drama teacher. And one of the

00:41:39.000 questions in the interview was, why can't you have an exceptional lesson without technology?

00:41:45.240 And I made the point, I'm like, well, you can. They were like, well, what do you mean? I went,

00:41:48.440 well that then presupposes that before technology there were no exceptional lessons now i didn't get

00:41:55.000 the job but yeah no but i annoyed someone yeah exactly the next day came here but i think the

00:42:08.680 point nevertheless is kind of an important one and that we do worship technology it is it has become

00:42:16.440 Some, something I tell people, make a list.

00:42:20.440 The aqueducts, the hanging gardens of Babylon,

00:42:23.980 the pyramids of Giza, going to the moon, the atom bomb,

00:42:27.320 these are all things we did before digital,

00:42:30.560 modern digital technology.

00:42:32.120 What human beings can achieve by ourselves

00:42:35.220 when we think and work is ridiculous.

00:42:38.500 Yet I think you're right, we've crossed

00:42:39.760 some sort of threshold where we think,

00:42:41.740 without tech, we are nothing.

00:42:43.300 Without this boost, I can't do anything.

00:42:45.660 And to be fair, as adults, I'm fine with it.

00:42:47.540 So think of something like AI, right?

00:42:50.800 AI, as far as I'm concerned,

00:42:52.660 I call it the tool nobody asks for solving problems nobody has.

00:42:56.920 I have no reason why large language models exist.

00:42:59.820 No one else does.

00:43:00.700 The guys who invented it don't.

00:43:01.920 They're like, oh, it's just science to us.

00:43:04.060 Enjoy.

00:43:05.120 But if you can say it's for anything,

00:43:07.100 it's for experts to offload or outsource their thinking.

00:43:10.760 So like me, I'm really good at stats,

00:43:12.800 but it's going to take me two hours to do stats.

00:43:15.580 I'll just use the machine.

00:43:16.400 It'll do it in two seconds.

00:43:17.300 But it only works because I can immediately vet what happens.

00:43:21.260 My expertise allows me to go, yep, that's correct.

00:43:23.320 Or, oh, no, that's wrong.

00:43:24.400 What did I do different?

00:43:25.120 I'm going to change it up.

00:43:26.600 The tools we use as experts to make our lives easier are not the tools a novice should be

00:43:32.360 using to learn how to become an expert.

00:43:34.980 When they use those tools, they do not learn a thing.

00:43:38.660 They do not learn the process.

00:43:39.900 They don't learn the material.

00:43:40.900 All they know is the output, copy, paste, give it to you.

00:43:43.520 so that's why you think about calculators kids who learn math on a calculator typically outperform

00:43:49.060 kids who learn math with pen and paper so long as they have their calculator as soon as you take

00:43:53.860 calculator away they drop to basically nothing because they weren't learning math they were

00:43:57.980 just learning how to type things so that you would go right answer and so a lot of this tech stuff

00:44:04.060 maybe as adults we can use it and that's where i can see some people saying if i'm trying to invent

00:44:08.980 the next space shuttle technology can help cool but if you're trying to learn about space or what

00:44:14.720 it means to build something or how engineering works all of that stuff should be done analog

00:44:20.600 and offline don't use the tool you use to make your life easier before you understand what the

00:44:25.800 process is first i was i'm my undergrad i was in film school and the way my so they wouldn't let

00:44:31.340 us touch cameras till our second or third year junior year of film school couldn't touch any

00:44:35.420 equipment we were pissed all we did was yell at him no we want to make movies but the argument

00:44:40.260 they said was an idiot with a camera is still an idiot like me i i could give you one today but

00:44:46.500 you're gonna have nothing to say but if we spend years figuring out how do you think through the

00:44:49.840 medium of film what's the language what are the patterns what are the processes now you have

00:44:54.440 something to do with the tool so you can only use tools down from where you're at and kids are

00:44:58.740 nowhere so i i'd say most the best lessons will never touch tech let me say this because i know

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00:47:18.600 I think about that a lot with history

00:47:20.660 because history and historians is a subject

00:47:23.100 that we cover a lot on the show.

00:47:24.580 we have lots of guests who are brilliant historians and the thing that the reason we do is i do think

00:47:31.460 certainly in my school into my generation i went to a pretty good school history was taught very

00:47:36.320 badly because it was kind of taught like a calculator in the sense of like here's some

00:47:40.760 dates you need to memorize these dates and here's one or two bits that you need to remember but you

00:47:47.020 weren't taught actual history which is effectively a story about human nature repeating in different

00:47:52.820 ways over centuries and millennia, right? That's all it is. And I think part of the reason so many

00:47:58.400 people are now disconnected from the fact that there is a human nature, and they all think in

00:48:02.900 this kind of blank slate utopian ways, they don't really understand history because they were not

00:48:08.640 taught it properly. And I don't see how an AI tool is going to teach you that understanding.

00:48:13.080 It can teach you dates. It probably can teach you dates way better than a human.

00:48:17.840 Drill the daylights out of it.

00:48:19.380 And you will remember, and you'll remember what the machine told you the cause of World War II was, but you're not going to understand human nature because you don't have that context.

00:48:27.680 And you know, one thing that I think I don't understand why this isn't a bigger talking point, you see it clearly with the big tech developers.

00:48:37.460 None of them let their kids use the devices that they generate.

00:48:41.440 I mean, Steve Jobs famously didn't have a tablet and all this stuff.

00:48:45.200 And then you go, well, you want to give this to my kids

00:48:47.880 when you're keeping...

00:48:49.100 It's like, if I went to a restaurant...

00:48:50.360 Your kids don't care.

00:48:51.020 Your kids are the guinea pigs.

00:48:52.760 Right.

00:48:53.060 But if I went to a restaurant

00:48:54.500 and the guy who ran that restaurant

00:48:57.260 was not prepared to give the food to his kids,

00:49:01.300 I'd be like, whoa, maybe I'm gonna go

00:49:03.320 to a different restaurant.

00:49:04.400 But we just carry on?

00:49:05.780 That's such a good analogy.

00:49:07.120 That's, yes, if you won't even eat your own food,

00:49:09.200 why shouldn't my kids eat your food?

00:49:11.100 But we do it.

00:49:11.800 And we do it at scale.

00:49:13.160 The amount of money we're shoving into it

00:49:14.640 is insane go back to the ai so we've got things here in the us i don't know if it's hit the uk

00:49:19.600 called alpha schools have you heard of those yet good don't so basically it's it's it's a tech bro

00:49:26.960 school they said we can 10x your learning any 10x man anytime someone uses business lingo in

00:49:33.280 education run it's not going to make any sense but they said we can 10x your learning by just using

00:49:37.840 an ai digital tutor two hours a day that's all your kids are going to need they're going to pass

00:49:42.000 every test. Yeah, I have friends who do that. So fair enough. So I guarantee you, you can pass a

00:49:47.000 test in two hours a day. That's fine. What you forget is the rest of the day in school, we're

00:49:53.680 not just doing numbers and facts and skills. Now we're hopefully, what we're doing for the rest of

00:49:59.500 the class, we might do 10 minutes on facts in class. Now we're going to do what's called deep

00:50:03.320 learning. We're going to have a discussion about it. How does that link with what we learned

00:50:06.340 yesterday? How does that tie it over here? How can we apply this? The reason why school is slow

00:50:10.700 is because it's developmentally appropriate

00:50:12.560 and we're pushing deeper rather than just pure breadth.

00:50:15.840 So as these schools say,

00:50:17.140 we can just run kids right through this material.

00:50:20.280 Cool, that's surface learning.

00:50:22.080 Exactly as you said, maybe these tools,

00:50:24.580 who's Justin Reich out of MIT said it great.

00:50:26.680 He says, maybe these like AI tools

00:50:28.300 would be good for learning to read,

00:50:32.200 but they're never gonna be really good

00:50:33.640 for reading to learn.

00:50:34.800 Once you actually wanna do something with a skill,

00:50:36.760 go deep, it's basically stuck on just surface data.

00:50:39.800 Here's the next pattern.

00:50:40.700 off you go. And so I think that's a really interesting, if you think about the history

00:50:44.380 of ed tech, where it came from, how it moved, it was basically sold to us as this is going

00:50:49.720 to stop drilling kill. Tech is going to free up creativity. It's going to let your kids

00:50:54.920 flourish and be huge human beings. They're not going to have to sit there and just wrote

00:50:58.600 memorize anymore. Yay. Well, cut to today. When's the only time digital technology appears

00:51:03.440 to work for learning? When you use it to wrote drilling kill, when you lock things down.

00:51:08.240 now a lot of people think maybe that has something to say about tech and it does but I also think

00:51:12.360 that says has a lot to say about learning and actually what is required for learning if they

00:51:15.720 would have stopped 20 years ago and said okay what is learning before shoving these tools in

00:51:19.680 front of kids maybe we would have saved 20 years of downslope to get to this point where we're like

00:51:24.500 you know what humans matter teachers are important depth matters one of the things I really noticed

00:51:29.140 when I was teaching is how I started in 08 and there wasn't a lot of tech in the classroom

00:51:35.900 And as it progressed to the time I left in 2020, 12 years, it became more and more tech focused.

00:51:43.540 There were iPads, you know, you went to the computer lab, there was interactive whiteboards.

00:51:48.700 There were other things that we were doing as well.

00:51:51.340 There were other types of pads that we were using in maths lessons.

00:51:55.000 And part of me, I remember when I was teaching going, how much of this is actually for the kids?

00:52:00.480 and how much of this, there's a financial incentive being conspiratorial. I mean,

00:52:07.420 does this actually work? Have we done enough testing into this?

00:52:11.480 None of it was driven by data or learning. There wasn't a single decision made, I would say,

00:52:17.340 across EdTech ever for learning. So we've got data out the wazoo that shows the more time kids

00:52:23.280 spend on tech at school for learning purposes, the more learning goes down. And it's basically

00:52:29.000 linear. It's not, some is okay, a lot is bad. It's just kids who don't use it at all, great. Kids who

00:52:35.600 use it a little bit, a little bit worse. A little bit more, a little bit worse. To the point where

00:52:38.820 kids who are using it six hours a day, basically all online, are two-thirds of a standard deviation

00:52:43.820 worse on average than kids who don't touch tech ever at school. So it's the data across standardized

00:52:50.400 tests, international tests, national tests, local tests, all shows that same thing. To which a lot

00:52:56.180 of people say, well, cool, that's just correlation. Correlation isn't causation. Very true. How do you

00:53:01.620 make correlation causation? And first, I would like to say, well, here, step one, triangulation

00:53:07.900 of correlation. The argument correlation isn't causation was really a salve against single

00:53:13.920 data sets, to be very wary of one data set. But if you see the same correlation across hundreds

00:53:21.560 of countries across decades across subjects across age levels that saying no longer means the same

00:53:28.440 thing so triangulation of correlation that's exactly what was going on with tech it didn't

00:53:32.840 matter where we looked we were seeing that same pattern so the next step then is you you do

00:53:37.240 convergence of evidence now you do research you get into the lab and you say okay what's actually

00:53:41.000 going on here and that's where we learned yeah human biology does not align well with digital

00:53:46.120 tech how we read we don't read on a screen the same way we read on paper how we think when we

00:53:51.240 write handwriting is very different than typing and all of the digital stuff was lesser than all

00:53:57.000 of the analog stuff we were looking at so now we've got correlation data we've got hard data

00:54:01.720 and then you get mechanisms that's where i come in as a neuroscientist and i say here's what's

00:54:06.200 going on in the brain here's why this explains all the patterns you're seeing so the data is there

00:54:11.240 so why then did we ever go down this path and that's why i say i always tell people look i can

00:54:16.360 show you about a hundred graphs showing tech harms learning. And people say, that's, that's

00:54:21.300 correlation. Show me any, show me 10 correlations that show benefit. They don't exist. There's no

00:54:28.480 real pattern going the other direction. So why are these tools in schools? The only other option has

00:54:35.000 to be some sort of economic incentive. They're not there for learning. There is no evidence to

00:54:38.960 prove they worked. Imagine, and maybe that's the whole thing. Like I always say, imagine I had a

00:54:43.860 drug i invented a new drug and you say what does that drug do and i go why don't you give it to

00:54:48.400 your kids and we'll find out now imagine every government in the world says that's a great idea

00:54:56.220 let's do it that's basically the ed tech model we think it will be good for them so let's give it a

00:55:00.440 go so let's give it let's let's do something so jared that being the case we're coming to the end

00:55:05.620 of our conversation which has been really informative and super brilliant what does this

00:55:10.200 mean for parents and what does this mean at the level of our societies what should we be doing

00:55:15.040 should we i mean to me banning school phones from schools is like a complete no-brainer right

00:55:19.860 but uh what else should should we do at the level of first the government and policy yeah and then

00:55:26.040 as a parent you know that's the one thing that when you become a parent you kind of go

00:55:30.060 i actually don't particularly give a shit what the governments do i just want to protect my kids

00:55:34.620 against whatever because i can't control that but i can't control this right so the bit that we

00:55:39.460 probably can't control but can influence is the government and then our own kids give us the ideas

00:55:45.540 right i'm gonna level with you i'm not a gamer even though i look like one i'm not gonna pretend

00:55:50.340 i've been grinding through rpgs between recordings although i have strong opinions about which final

00:55:55.460 fantasy was the best one i think it's japanese and i think there's a sword that's genuinely

00:56:00.340 everything i know but our social media guys showed me this app and i genuinely thought that's quite

00:56:05.220 clever it's called snaxy basically game publishers need new players and they're willing to pay to

00:56:10.660 get them snaxy just passes that money on to you you play games you were probably going to play

00:56:16.100 anyway you own coins and you cash them out for real rewards paypal amazon netflix gift cards if

00:56:22.820 you prefer gaming credit you can redeem for playstation xbox steam and nintendo actual money

00:56:28.980 not just points that expire it takes a few minutes to set up you open the app swipe through the game

00:56:33.540 off us pick something that looks decent play it earn redeem that's the whole thing there's a sign

00:56:39.700 up bonus worth up to ten dollars if you use our link which is in the description of this episode

00:56:45.460 that's s n a k z y snacksie click the link in the description to get started and when you sign up

00:56:53.700 use the code triggerpod that's t-r-i-g-g-e-r-p-o-d to claim your ten dollar bonus and the app is

00:57:04.240 mobile only so click the link from your phone not your laptop highest level you do a massive tech

00:57:12.340 audit if you're a government you put a kibosh no more new ed tech for the next two years until we

00:57:17.260 get a sense of what we've got how much money we've spent how it's working right now and what you'll

00:57:22.620 find through that kind of in each school will have to do their own audit based on that but what

00:57:26.200 you'll find is 90 to 95 percent of everything we're blowing money on in education just ain't

00:57:31.880 working it was a waste of time it was a waste of money and in that it's it's a zero-sum game the

00:57:37.140 the 21 billion dollars that went into building tech infrastructure for schools necessarily did

00:57:42.560 not go to training new teachers to increasing the pay rate of current teachers to lessening

00:57:48.020 workload so it's if we can stop new tech do an audit figure out what's working and then the

00:57:53.700 government has to build a tech database basically that says you cannot ever go to a school with your

00:58:00.980 product until you have met these standards of safety of efficacy and privacy basically what's

00:58:07.780 going on in the background of your tool and that's got to be hardcore so basically you just you just

00:58:12.740 regulate it like you would medicine or anything else put some limits on what do we expect from

00:58:16.900 these tools if they're during doing worse than a pen and paper then no it doesn't belong in the

00:58:21.540 school if you can genuinely prove benefit then we'll have a chat but go back to the personal

00:58:25.620 level this is us as parents now is ah all right step one buy a printer it's like the easiest

00:58:34.180 stupidest idea but if you can make your house analog like you've done that's the best way to

00:58:39.620 get your kids ready to do analog work at school so we print everything out you got homework

00:58:46.100 print it you got to read print it we have our tech-free hopefully home you have your tech-free

00:58:51.220 days if you need to um when you support your kids with their learning everything is offline you're

00:58:57.460 taking notes offline you're doing note cards offline you're having discussions offline you

00:59:00.980 just make your home analog now as a group of parents how do we push back that's when if you

00:59:06.980 go as one parent so the easiest way to do it is through an opt-out is you go to a school and you

00:59:11.940 you say, I would like to opt my child out of all non-essential tech use. Um, Vermont is about to

00:59:17.700 pass a bill that makes that legal. So once they do it, everyone, it's so soon it will be legal in

00:59:22.460 the U S to say, I do not want my kid using tech, which is awesome. If you can't get your voice

00:59:28.260 heard, one parent usually is seen as a nuisance. If you're the one parent speaking up, they're

00:59:32.580 like, yeah, ignore that one. But if you can get a small coalition, even 10, 10 parents together

00:59:37.120 saying the same thing, that's when they're going to have to listen. And your biggest allies in

00:59:41.780 this entire tech battle. And basically, PS, just be aware, all you're doing is asking for data.

00:59:48.180 That's it. Just show me proof that this is working. Show me proof that in any way this

00:59:52.620 has helped my kid. If you can, cool. We're not asking for miracles, just evidence. And no one's

00:59:57.800 got it. Your school especially won't have it. So if they can't prove it, then we can start to step

01:00:01.740 away. But your biggest allies are going to be teachers. So I've been working in education for

01:00:05.820 a long time. My estimate now is about 70% of teachers are done with tech. They hate it. And

01:00:11.360 you've been in a classroom longer than 15 years you know how bad kids are today compared to what

01:00:15.520 they were but teachers can't speak up the teachers don't have a voice until parents do when parents

01:00:22.960 start moving teachers will swoop in behind you and they will say yep we can help you we've got your

01:00:27.200 supports we've got the data you need and they become your biggest champions unfortunately they

01:00:32.240 just can't talk because their jobs are on the line i was working at a district in kansas recently

01:00:37.600 where the district gave everyone laptops here's your one-to-one programs put a program on that

01:00:43.760 timed how long the laptop was used for what purposes sent that data back to the district

01:00:48.420 and they put a marker they said you have to use this 20 minutes in your class every day otherwise

01:00:54.920 you will lose your job so if you're a teacher and you know tech doesn't work and you've just been

01:01:00.040 told i have to use tech 20 minutes every single day otherwise i'm fired you don't have a voice

01:01:04.860 You put your head down and you do what you got to do.

01:01:06.780 So that's why parents become essential.

01:01:08.580 You push, teachers will have your back,

01:01:10.660 but we can't wait for teachers to make the move.

01:01:12.640 I mean, partly because of this, I think,

01:01:15.100 and also, you know, I think a lot of people have concerns

01:01:17.220 about the politicization of education as well.

01:01:20.340 I meet more and more people now who are planning

01:01:23.100 or are homeschooling already.

01:01:24.800 And that seems to be like a route

01:01:27.440 that a lot of people are now taking

01:01:28.780 just because of the concerns they have

01:01:30.460 about digital technology, the politics of the classroom,

01:01:34.260 and lots of other things that are going on.

01:01:36.200 Yeah. And I think that's, once we get the learning settled,

01:01:40.680 that's when we can start having more meaningful debates

01:01:43.040 on what is this all for?

01:01:44.360 And then what are the curriculum aspects of it?

01:01:46.780 What is actually being taught here?

01:01:48.860 So my focus is 100% on, look,

01:01:50.820 if we're going to take kids, 12 years of our kids' life,

01:01:54.100 we better be doing best by them.

01:01:56.060 And whatever it is we're going to teach them,

01:01:57.620 maybe that's beyond my purview suite.

01:02:00.020 There is a way learning works.

01:02:01.400 It's a biological process.

01:02:03.060 If you follow these steps, there's a way it works best.

01:02:05.940 If we can go back to that, realign schools with that,

01:02:08.500 then I think we're in a much better place to have better debates about.

01:02:11.380 Now, what do we teach them?

01:02:13.400 What do we actually want them to take away from this?

01:02:16.420 We're just having, and it sucks, man, right?

01:02:17.760 We're having debates on form over function.

01:02:21.500 We're so stuck on what works and what doesn't,

01:02:24.780 and we're so down a path of something that doesn't,

01:02:26.700 that we've got to spend so much time and money correcting that

01:02:29.200 before we can get to the deeper, more important question.

01:02:31.560 Why are we here?

01:02:32.320 What are we actually trying to do?

01:02:33.320 Well, that's the amazing thing.

01:02:34.320 And it's not just with this issue.

01:02:35.820 It's with almost everything.

01:02:36.820 It's how rarely anyone asks what works and what doesn't.

01:02:42.800 So much of it has become about people's moralization of things.

01:02:46.880 If you do this, you're a good person if you do that.

01:02:49.080 And we almost forget there's ideas that work and there's ideas that don't.

01:02:53.360 It's kind of crazy.

01:02:54.360 There's biology.

01:02:55.360 There's things that work.

01:02:56.360 There's things that don't.

01:02:57.360 You have a memory or you don't.

01:02:58.780 You have attention or you don't.

01:03:00.880 I think at certain levels, that's okay. At my level, as neuroscientists, people are fine with

01:03:05.660 it. It's like, yeah, okay, you're talking about cells. But as soon as you get up to the social

01:03:09.920 level, where now we're in psychology, and that's where people think it must be different. And maybe

01:03:14.220 it is nuanced, but there still has to be structure to all of this. Otherwise, we're going to have a

01:03:20.580 million kids living in a million different worlds smelling a million different things as they get

01:03:24.580 older. And I don't think that's going to be a very easy place to live in. Well, Jared, thank you so

01:03:28.800 for coming on and sharing this with our audience. We're going to head to Substack where we're going

01:03:32.560 to ask you questions from our audience. Before we do though, the last question is always the same.

01:03:36.720 What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:03:43.280 What if digital technology and digital skills are irrelevant to the future of work? What if we don't

01:03:50.720 need our kids all to use an iPad in primary years in order to become work ready in the future?

01:03:56.480 what if tech isn't the answer well hold on what let's explore that before we move on though

01:04:01.440 because yeah i mean counter arguments are pretty obvious here which is like everything is becoming

01:04:06.000 digital yeah like what are you talking about so if you track digital literacy amongst students

01:04:12.880 from 2013 to 2023 the percentage of kids who are digitally literate across the world the

01:04:17.600 countries we've tested has dropped 21 percent despite in that time the percentage of kids

01:04:23.760 using tech every day in explicit tech-based schools and classrooms has increased over 600%.

01:04:30.160 So we're teaching tech more and more and more to our kids. They're using it all day, every day,

01:04:35.140 yet they're worse at it at the end. Why? Because maybe tech literacy comes from deep knowledge

01:04:41.120 of other things, of self. I always say, if you want to be tech literate, be life literate first,

01:04:47.520 and then you move those skills onto tech.

01:04:49.920 So I think if we reset schooling back to humanistic recognition,

01:04:55.320 to we're here to teach you literacy, we're here to teach you numeracy,

01:04:58.300 we're here to teach you how to think and how to learn,

01:05:01.000 now whatever tool comes down the pipe, you're going to be fine

01:05:03.860 and you're going to be able to adapt to it.

01:05:05.680 And it could be that once we go back to training kids analog again,

01:05:10.500 tech is fine, man. No one taught me tech. I use tech just fine.

01:05:13.420 No one taught my dad tech. He can send emojis with the best of them.

01:05:16.180 And maybe when we all come out of there, maybe a lot of us are thinking for work, maybe I don't want to do anything tech.

01:05:22.700 Maybe I want to think more about craft.

01:05:24.560 Maybe I want to only use tech to do stats, but that's not going to change the way how I actually run my experiments with actual human beings.

01:05:30.880 So tech will always be there, but I think right now we believe that's the only future people have.

01:05:35.840 And I suppose the counter-argument against my counter-argument is what I alluded to in a joking way earlier,

01:05:41.840 which is, I mean, if it can be done on a computer,

01:05:44.940 why wouldn't it be done by a computer 10 years from now?

01:05:48.980 Maybe it will, but all of that stuff.

01:05:53.360 So you're thinking, is your argument that...

01:05:55.800 I don't know that digital-based jobs are going to exist 10 years from now

01:05:59.800 because AI will be doing the job.

01:06:01.760 We'll take it, which leaves us with nothing more than what else is there

01:06:05.200 but us, but human beings.

01:06:06.800 I can see that.

01:06:07.800 I hope we push back before that day.

01:06:10.400 I hope it's not that AI gets so good

01:06:12.560 that we just relinquish control of those jobs.

01:06:16.340 And I hope we get to the stage where we're like,

01:06:17.580 you know what?

01:06:18.380 Screw that.

01:06:19.040 No, I don't want to use that.

01:06:20.640 Or I don't want that.

01:06:21.940 And we're just going to go back to humanistic small scale.

01:06:24.360 You got kids.

01:06:25.420 I talk about this with my daughter.

01:06:28.500 I want the smallest life for my daughter.

01:06:30.940 And her choice, do what you want to do.

01:06:33.300 But our generation was raised to be huge.

01:06:36.180 If you're not the biggest in the world, you failed.

01:06:39.680 If you're not the best movie star, you're not a real actor.

01:06:43.180 No.

01:06:44.260 How can we go back to small-scale community

01:06:46.120 where if my daughter just decides to pick up a craft

01:06:48.320 and we live in Italy and she lives in the same village

01:06:50.580 for the rest of her 80 years just making bracelets, sweet.

01:06:55.160 You don't need tech for that.

01:06:56.540 It's not flash hot.

01:06:58.120 It's not going to change the world,

01:06:59.040 but it's going to change your community.

01:07:00.220 Maybe if we think smaller, tech becomes less important.

01:07:04.020 Jared, thank you for coming on.

01:07:05.320 Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk

01:07:07.700 where we ask Jared your questions.

01:07:09.340 What advice would you give to a curriculum coordinator responding to the AI invasion of our learning spaces?

01:07:17.140 How can schools develop robust, actionable policies that protect the outsourcing of our children's thinking to AI?

TRIGGERnometry - June 03, 2026

＂We’re Regressing Into The Unknown＂ - Dr Jared Cooney Horvath

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