I remember that - even though Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' - he never allowed his children to use iPads.
I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media.
And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots.
What does that tell us?
TaupeRanger 22 seconds ago [-]
It tells us nothing. People act like this is some big hypocrisy or revelation. First of all, Jobs DID allow his children to use iPads, but it was limited. People take a single quote from the Isaacson biography out of context, assuming that he never let his children have access to iPads at all, forever. Other interviews he gave talked about limiting access - like ALL families should do.
Jobs was literally just parenting. Limiting screen time is something all parents should do. We also limit access to sugary foods and other things that can be damaging in excess. Calling tech executives hypocrites for having common sense parenting limits is not really a dunk.
Telemakhos 41 minutes ago [-]
I think you are right, and your "bet" about Zuckerberg checks out, at least according to media reports about his family. Still, asking someone to draw an inference based on three pieces of evidence, of which two are a bet and an assumption, seems hasty.
iugtmkbdfil834 6 minutes ago [-]
For a random individual plucked out of general population, you would be correct. Three is hardly anything. However, for individuals that effectively determine what actual average is to a population ( by shaping tech that shapes said population at the very least ), does not seem hasty. It may be a proxy, but it is not hasty.
weird-eye-issue 40 minutes ago [-]
> And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots.
I doubt that, but the others seem reasonable
whywhywhywhy 13 minutes ago [-]
Yeah Sam Altman's kids will use chatbots but here's the difference, your kids no matter the amount of money you're willing to spend will never ever get to use the chatbots Sam Altman's kids will have access to to build their legacy.
noosphr 6 minutes ago [-]
That we shouldn't take child rearing advice from the man who killed himself with fruit juice.
brookst 23 minutes ago [-]
Are Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Altman generally seen as experts in childhood development and education?
hananova 18 minutes ago [-]
No but they are experts in engineering their garbage to cause maximum damage.
compounding_it 2 minutes ago [-]
Engineering or marketing ? I doubt Zuckerberg or Altman have much involvement in engineering after their products took off. After a certain point they were no longer engineers of their products.
Koshkin 10 minutes ago [-]
Parents do not have to be "experts in chilhood development" to know what is best for their children. Especially experts in their fields like the manufacturing of alcohol, guns or other products universallly considered dangerous.
Argonaut998 13 minutes ago [-]
Do they need to be? If I was a billionaire surrounded by the most educated and competent people in the world I wouldn't even spare a thought for the "Whole words are better than phonics" crowd.
brookst 9 minutes ago [-]
So it’s kind of an appeal to authority, without any evidence of authority?
I’d be super interested in the panels of experts that Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Altman (assuming GGP’s “asssumption” is correct) convened when making these decisions.
Absent that, this isn’t any more persuasive than saying that Coca Cola is good for infants because I assume Coke execs feed it to theirs.
bell-cot 13 minutes ago [-]
No - but they could hire full-time panels of such experts, and never miss the money.
More to the point - if the CEO of DogFoodCo won't let his own family pets eat any of his company's flagship products, then maybe smart dog owners should follow his example?
Forgeties79 9 minutes ago [-]
No need for the leading question/bait when you know what they’re saying. No one said they’re experts on childhood development, they’re saying “it’s telling they won’t even let their kids use these services when they swear it’s safe for our kids to do so.”
functional_dev 15 minutes ago [-]
exactly, makes me think... if person who makes the bread does not feed his own family, something is wrong
renewiltord 9 minutes ago [-]
Also a good reason for why one shouldn’t have one’s child raised through the policies of people who don’t want kids. If they don’t have any skin in the game…
lotsofpulp 53 seconds ago [-]
Historically, the policies of people who do want kids have also been a good reason for why one shouldn't have one's child raised through the policies of people who do want kids.
Like slaveowners who want kids, but also want slaves to make babies so you can have more slaves.
Point being, the focus should be on the policies themselves.
Drunkfoowl 14 minutes ago [-]
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mentalgear 57 minutes ago [-]
> And that much of Silicon Valley’s leadership (and the world’s rich, for that matter) send their own kids to Montessori, Steiner, and other educational institutions that prefer pencil and paper to digital tablet, conversations to smartphones, modeling clay and outdoor imagineering to online gaming.
> In their book, ‘Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse is Making Our Kids Dumber,’ educators Joe Clement and Matt Miles write: “It’s interesting to think that in a modern public school, where kids are being required to use electronic devices like iPads, Steve Jobs’s kids would be some of the only kids opted out.”
An offline iPad with a limited set of educational apps/books would be a good classroom aid
Of course, an iPad without those limits is bad
dagss 3 minutes ago [-]
It is not just about what you can access.
The biggest problem is you get conditioned to instant and constant dopamine hits, which works directly against a lot of the things one is supposed to learn in school.
Kids learn the A-Z in record speed in 1st grade. But they don't learn to concentrate or that learning things can sometimes be challenging and the value of perseverance and that understanding eventually comes.
So in later grades they pay for learning the A-Z too fast through the iPad. Because they didn't learn how to learn.
The net effect in Norwegian classrooms over past 5 years of iPad education seems to be negative and it is not about what kids are exposed to. It is about not learning to concentrate.
tuwtuwtuwtuw 7 minutes ago [-]
Are you certain about that being "good"?
loa_in_ 42 minutes ago [-]
The kids you mention likely have multiple VR, AR and other gadget setups in their own home. Too much of a good thing is just that.
roysting 47 minutes ago [-]
The telescreens are for you, not for them.
On another totally unrelated note, this guy [1] that is not at all connected to the Epstein class whatsoever (he is) and is only an advisor to the leader of some some small little organization called the world economic forum says you and your children should be kept “happy” with drugs and video games.
Skip to the very end for the statement or listen to the whole little clip to hear how the demigods think about you and your children “worthless” children.
you're assuming zuck or jobs kids have anything resembling "normal" children lives
shevy-java 54 minutes ago [-]
The key message that poster before tried to convey was
that they themselves do not believe into their own products,
not that rich kids are privileged royal kings today. This
ties into e. g. Facebook trying to addict people into using
it - infinite scrolling as an example. The latter can be
quite a problem on youtube or people using smartphones while
riding in a subway, jumping from pointless video to pointless
video - this is quite addictive.
rvz 59 minutes ago [-]
He (Zuckerberg) doesn't. It tells us that they know that kids should not be using any of this technology as it is extremely addictive to kids who are none the wiser.
> What does that tell us?
It tells us three things:
1. Do not give a child access to iPads, social media or ChatGPT until they are old enough and are aware of their addictive nature.
2. Get them to read books as an alternative.
3. Being unable to restrict access to iPhones, ChatGPT to a child is a parenting skill issue and not the responsibility of a government to impose global parental controls on everyone for the purpose of surveillance.
microtonal 41 minutes ago [-]
I was nodding along until the third point. As a parent it can be really hard to deny your kids to smartphone/tablets when other parents don’t care and all their friends play Roblox, use WhatsApp to communicate, or watch YouTube.
Your kid will be the odd one out, missing some shared culture, left out of conversation or meetups they arrange in IM, etc.
The government should absolutely forbid social media and addictive games to kids under 16, otherwise it’s very hard as a parent to escape these little addiction machines and you can only try to limit damage.
Of course, we have to find a way that is not damaging privacy at the same time.
(If you don’t have kids or have kids that are under ~10, you do probably not know what the pressure is like… yet.)
tonyedgecombe 27 minutes ago [-]
Part of being a parent is saying no when your children pester you for something you know is bad for them.
leksak 57 minutes ago [-]
3. When your net worth is measured in billions you have other opportunities in your parenting not necessarily afforded equally to every other parental unit.
gadflyinyoureye 1 hours ago [-]
That the US and by extension the West is ruled by corrupt individuals that knowingly harm their fellow citizens. However, especially the US, few people will parent their children in a way that will protect and strengthen their kids. The schools, which gave up on success years ago, will continue to harm the children. The community with do nothing since they view the parents and the schools as the guardians of children, not themselves. Almost no one wants to be the childless crank that shows up at a PTA or school board meeting demanding that tech be removed from the daily lives of the children.
So the kids will continue to be harmed. EdTech will get money because this time they will do it right. AI will lead to a new thoughtless generation.
econ 42 minutes ago [-]
>Almost no one wants to be the childless crank that shows up at a PTA or school board meeting demanding that tech be removed from the daily lives of the children.
I had never even realized.
As a bonus I now also see cranks proposing to raise other peoples children in some kind of sweatshop calling it education and schools. As if that was ever the goal.
s5300 21 minutes ago [-]
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smatti 2 hours ago [-]
A very similar development is going on in neighboring Finland. There are schools that use almost exclusively paper books (instead of digital ones) again. The overall consensus among parents is that books are way better than screens for kids, all the way up to high school. Hand-writing and free drawing with pen and paper provide many advantages to fixed screens. You cannot open a new tab to Youtube in a book. The significance of these things is finally recognized now. Parents are also worried about the short video brain rot and psychological "capture" of our kids by social media companies.
Naturally, the kids should learn AI and AI workflows also. And personal AI assistants can probably help many kids in their studies. Learning AI should be its own subject but that should not ruin the way kids study other subjects where there are proven old ways to get to great results.
Source: I have 10 Finnish kids
Edit: FYI: an old (2018) link to an article about a finding about the matter: https://yle.fi/a/3-10514984 "Finland’s digital-based curriculum impedes learning, researcher finds"
gritspants 1 hours ago [-]
I don't see the advantage of learning 'AI workflows'. I am in the US and there seems to be a FOMO plague infecting our school system when it comes to technology. In practice it seems more destructive to the child.
Gigachad 1 hours ago [-]
I keep hearing this at work but so far no one has explained what “learning ai” actually means. It seems to just be nonsense like those people selling prompt recipes or claiming to be prompt engineers.
No one needs training in prompting AI. I could understand if they meant a deeper layer of integrating tech with systems but all they ever mean is typing things in to a text box.
Mordisquitos 46 minutes ago [-]
I suspect that, in practice, what many enthusiastic advocates mean by “learning AI” is actually “learning to need AI”.
In other words, the aim is to get kids used to using AI as soon as possible, so that they do not learn the skills to function without depending on it.
brobdingnagians 57 minutes ago [-]
Especially since kids these days aren't even very good at using computers:
It seems to me that if someone can read and think critically-- they can RTFM and get much better much quicker at computers and AI than people who spent all their time tapping an ipad to watch the next video.
Gigachad 56 minutes ago [-]
I'd think really the only AI skill you need is the ability to think independently and be able to verify the results you are getting or spot when something is wrong in the response.
It would take a few sessions at most to take someone from 10 years and get them fully up to speed with AI tools since they have zero learning curve.
ontouchstart 53 minutes ago [-]
AI “workflows” share the same addictive characteristics of web surfing online virtual media, which can be counter productive. In this regard, we do need some serious learning at all the levels in the workplace. Otherwise we will become addicted to the slot machines.
Addiction is a much harder problem than distraction.
schnitzelstoat 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think they need to learn 'AI workflows' (whatever that means). But I think it makes sense to use the LLM's as a resource.
I've used them when studying new languages (human languages not programming languages) and ML algorithms and they've been really useful.
Learning to check the citations it gives you is a useful skill too. I wish many adults were more sceptical about the things they are told.
Gigachad 33 minutes ago [-]
It's true that you can use LLMs as a learning resource and to unblock you. But students just aren't. They are using them as a way to avoid thinking, avoid research, and just spit out an answer they can paste in to their homework.
jjgreen 21 minutes ago [-]
They should at least require handwritten work, the kids will still be AI-stupid but will at least be able to write.
doikor 22 minutes ago [-]
> I don't see the advantage of learning 'AI workflows'.
This would be just the modern version of "Computer class" back in the day when we learned to use word, excel, etc. Just another tool among others that is helpful to learn but should be limited to that specific class.
Though actual sad thing learning from friends with kids is that the modern "computer class" does not actually teach kids to use computers much these days.
cucumber3732842 1 hours ago [-]
It's not FOMO. The line level people actually educating the children don't give a crap about the technology. They will generally make the best of whatever resources they have and procure wisely. Like everything else in government it's an administrative racket and all the suppliers fan the flames because they make money. Ain't no different than how your local building or environmental inspector finds himself screwing people doing nothing wrong and approving absurd stuff because that's what the rules big business ghost wrote and paid to have the government adopt say he must do.
Kids are using crappy subscription education services for homework and doing all their reading on screens (and educators are toiling away to work with these systems) because the people who make money off the services and screens paid to have the incentives distorted such that buying their products is the least shitty option.
Gigachad 1 hours ago [-]
As much as I would have disagreed as a kid, I very much agree now. Laptops were used more for flash games and reddit than learning in the classroom in my experience. And likely the act of reading physical books and handwriting is better for learning.
BostonFern 38 minutes ago [-]
That anecdote sounds like a problem with discipline and ethics, not with technology.
Gigachad 35 minutes ago [-]
You can put a candy bowl in front of kids and tell them not to touch it. Or you can just not put it there. Ultimately kids will be less distracted when you remove the source of distractions. Phone bans in schools are showing this already.
cindyllm 31 minutes ago [-]
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mentalgear 1 hours ago [-]
~20 years later on all the "Digitalisation of Schools" brought us is waning attention spans for children but billions of sells to Big Tech for software, and e-devices that after a few years become electronic waste to be shipped to a poor country stripped for rare earths and finally ending in landfills in Africa or Asia to poison the ground water.
graemep 1 hours ago [-]
"screens" can be great for research and there is a lot you can learn online.
The main problem mentioned in the article you link to seem to be distraction from what they were supposed to be doing.
Distraction is not always bad and kids can learn a lot by being distracted by something that catches their interest. it depends on the approach and its more of a problem following a fixed curriculum in a classroom. Probably more of a problem for uninterested or younger children.
I think video can be a big problem, particularly given the tendency of sites to try to keep you there.
teekert 14 minutes ago [-]
Well, the school of our kids blocks a lot of urls. Now they play the games via some url that goes like https://unblocked.something.something. These kids are not crazy.
supersaw 1 hours ago [-]
The same thing is happening in Norway now too. The general attitudes have shifted quite a lot in the last few years. In recent months the Department of Education has committed to reducing screen usage across the board, but particularly in grades 1 to 4.
About "all the way up to high school", what about the rest? I'm in the camp that it's better for all people, regardless of age actually.
SiempreViernes 1 hours ago [-]
Well in university you are typically an adult and so what your parents think about the study material isn't a great concern, except for the case they are a subject matter expert.
rimliu 45 minutes ago [-]
if you need to "learn AI" - your AI sucks.
greenbit 1 hours ago [-]
Having observed a fair amount of computer based primary school, it seems to me anyway that the biggest problem is that kids just can't focus properly that way. Even if the machine is locked down to prevent open internet access, it's just too easy for them to become distracted by the medium itself. Books, pencils and paper may not be flashy, but isn't that actually desirable, in this context?
amonith 58 minutes ago [-]
Yup. As a kid I could "entertain" (distract is the better word) myself by "drawing shapes" with the cursor, highlighting random things, switching between random cells in Excel, or just like... browsing through the system without any plan or reason.
Procrastination is hell of a drug.
I'm so lucky I didn't have this in the classroom.
andrepd 18 minutes ago [-]
To be fair, I did entertain myself by drawing comics on my notebook or playing with my pencil and rubber as if they were toy cars.
amonith 16 minutes ago [-]
I drew a lot of doodles and did things like that as well, but I think that they're less visually stimulating and simply "slower" so there's still some brain capacity left for learning.
SSLy 35 minutes ago [-]
I was on the tail end of no-screen schools, and even then I could find anything to distract myself with, daydreaming if necessary. But mostly doodling the gutters.
HPsquared 54 minutes ago [-]
Even doodling on the margin can be distracting. Or doing little tricks with the pencil. But these don't distract the verbal part of the brain as much perhaps.
argee 59 minutes ago [-]
If you open any of my middle school notebooks you'll find around 5-10x more doodles than notes, by surface area.
tomaskafka 3 minutes ago [-]
One very important aspect is that we learn through haptics and precise arm movements required to write/draw things down.
compounding_it 6 minutes ago [-]
I think Charlie Munger or Warren Buffet said once about an iPad for reading that : it would be terrible to read on a device where it was so easy to get distracted with the internet on your fingers.
E readers work for a reason. You aren’t distracted (the slow browser in it is hardly a distraction)
artakulov 1 hours ago [-]
I grew up in a post-Soviet country where schools had zero tech budget, so it was all books and chalkboards by default. Looking back that was probably fine for learning fundamentals. The kids who went on to competitive math and CS didn't need tablets in 3rd grade to get there.
The part nobody talks about is textbook cost. Digital textbooks were supposed to make education cheaper but somehow the subscription model made it more expensive. At least a physical book you buy once and it sits on the shelf for the next kid.
mixermachine 36 minutes ago [-]
Fully agree.
I went to school in Germany and many of our textbooks were free there.
Sometimes you would get a textbook that is already >= 10 years and out of shape but who cares?
Especially the basic knowledge does not change often.
Buying all these textbooks new every year feels like a scam to me as they are then only used for one year by the pupil.
Btw when you damaged a book beyond repair, you needed to pay the full price.
Only the exercise books needed to be bought freshly as they were "used up" fully after the year.
Still, they were often seen as optional.
Gigachad 31 minutes ago [-]
You could sell them after too. Now the book is the same price but it's a 1 year license. The platform we used was so restricted that it would block access the moment your network connection dropped.
SSLy 30 minutes ago [-]
the other part nobody talks about is hauling that bloody fuckton of paper to between house, its bus stop, the school, and its bus stop either.
amadeuspagel 1 hours ago [-]
> Basic skills — especially reading, writing, and numeracy — must be firmly established first, physical textbooks are often better suited for that purpose.
Reading and writing, maybe, but numeracy? With a computer, you can get instant feedback, immidiately see whether you did the math correctly or not. With a textbook, you have to wait for your teacher.
nimonian 47 minutes ago [-]
I still believe looking up the answer in the back of the book is completely fine. It creates a moment of tension. It invites you to justify in your own head that the answer is right before checking. The cognitive dissonance when you see your answer is wrong and really have to challenge yourself, or ask your neighbour, to see why - is all really valuable.
I just don't think "instant feedback" is as important as we think in mathematics education, and might even rob us of moments to practice mathematical behaviours like justifying, communicating and accommodating. Slow feedback does have benefits.
I am a tech enthusiast to put it mildly. I also taught maths in schools from roughly 2010 to 2020 so saw the iPad/app revolution in my classrooms. Anecdotally, I think it made my lessons and my students worse. Books, paper and each other are the best tools (in my very personal opinion).
HPsquared 58 minutes ago [-]
Tbh the same applies to a lot of subjects if you discuss them with a sufficiently good LLM. (Socratic method)
eimrine 47 minutes ago [-]
LLM is fundamentally not prone to the Socratic method. Socratic method requires both parts to learn something while the discourse. LLM will forget some shit often.
22 minutes ago [-]
erfgh 16 minutes ago [-]
There are books with written solutions.
nalekberov 54 minutes ago [-]
> With a computer, you can get instant feedback, immidiately see whether you did the math correctly or not. With a textbook, you have to wait for your teacher.
Where is this rush for instant feedback coming from?
abyssin 47 minutes ago [-]
A few years ago I went back to school. Hoping to manage some sort of Internet addiction, I bought a reMarkable 1 tablet. It did help me, but in retrospect I should've bought a black and white laser printer and a few boxes of paper. The ergonomy of paper is excellent after all, especially for a brain like mine that grew up without computers.
There's a major issue though, which is that course material get designed for use on computer screens first. But I have good hope that llm-based pipelines should help fix this issue.
johanneskanybal 19 minutes ago [-]
It sounds good on paper (pun intended) but policy strikes again, "Can my kid bring home her math book so we can work on the parts she's struggling with?" No of course not it lives in a cupboard at school 90% of the time might get some screen shares from it.
kleiba 19 minutes ago [-]
Interesting. Where we currently live, kids carry all books back and forth between home and school every day in giant backpacks.
galdauts 13 minutes ago [-]
Back when I went to school in Germany, we had a locker at school, but I just took the books I needed for assignments home with me. I haven't heard of schools that don't let you take (loaned) books home.
elminjo 18 minutes ago [-]
this is a problem. we make photos of the pages. i think there should be always a digital option when you have a physical book.
goldylochness 1 hours ago [-]
absolutely the right move, use books for learning. i would still use computers for building ie coding, but absolutely not entertainment, not "learning to use microsoft word"
schnitzelstoat 1 hours ago [-]
I think it's better to use books and not have so many distractions in the classroom.
But equally it's really helpful to be able to ask ChatGPT or whatever for a different explanation when you get stuck - but that is probably better done at home when studying the homework. It stops you getting frustrated and helps keep you making progress and in the 'flow state'.
I guess a big problem for schools now will be how to get them to use AI to help them learn rather than simply getting it do to their homework so they can go and play video games or whatever. I know if I'd had it as a kid I would've been tempted to do the latter.
nalekberov 53 minutes ago [-]
> But equally it's really helpful to be able to ask ChatGPT or whatever for a different explanation when you get stuck - but that is probably better done at home when studying the homework. It stops you getting frustrated and helps keep you making progress and in the 'flow state'.
Yeah sure, then get a (sometimes) wrong answer with high confidence and believe it?
schnitzelstoat 46 minutes ago [-]
It's quite rare that it gives a wrong answer nowadays. Even more so if you ask it to use the internet etc.
But yeah, it's not infallible and sometimes even when it gives you a source it will incorrectly summarise it, but you can double check the information in the source itself.
It just makes it a lot easier to do quickly rather than having to go and find the right Wikipedia article or dig through lots of documentation. Just like Wikipedia and online docs made it easier than having to go to the library or leaf through a 500-page manual etc.
Gigachad 28 minutes ago [-]
Only if you are asking surface level questions. There are also certain topics that seem to be worse than others. For asking about how to do things in software guis modern LLMs seem to have a high rate of making up features or paths to reach them. For asking advice in games I've seen an extremely high rate of hallucinations. Asking why something is broken in my codebase has about a 95% hallucination rate.
If you are just asking basic science questions or phone reviews then its pretty reliable.
rimliu 42 minutes ago [-]
using AI for education is one of the worst ideas for education.
fifilura 25 minutes ago [-]
Buying a book made of trees is very often much more expensive than reading on a screen. Worldreader provides books for free for schools in Africa where they only need to pay for a $40 phone once instead of spending money on books.
It’s kind of baffling to me that laptops in classrooms took off the way they did, as it seemed like a distraction machine to me even 25+ years ago, as a kid myself! My school got some carts of laptops that would move from classroom to classroom in ~2000—they were heavily used for flash games and other nonsense, and were strictly worse for that than in the dedicated computer lab classroom, where all of the monitors faced into the center of the room where the teacher could see them.
When I got to college a few years later I’d sit in the back of classrooms and see that a majority of students who’d brought a laptop (ostensibly for notes) were consistently distracted and doing something else, be it games or StumbleUpon. I can only imagine these decisions were made by groups of adults sitting around conference rooms, each staring at their own laptop and paying 20% attention to the meeting at hand.
fedeb95 27 minutes ago [-]
computers are good learning tools for adults that learned how to learn with books.
rvz 1 hours ago [-]
Good.
This is the right decision and should be to go back to the basics, instead of full computer everywhere including iPads, phones and laptops.
Remember the big tech founders / CEOs do not give their kids access to social media, iPads, phones for a reason.
andrepd 19 minutes ago [-]
Screens and computers are incredibly useful in education when they are used for some concrete purpose. Just think about how incredibly useful it is to use Desmos or Manim to explain certain mathematical concepts, as opposed to chalk on blackboard or print on paper.
Replacing a paper book with the same pdf on an ipad screen though, has to be one of the most stupid ideas anyone could come up with.
walthamstow 1 hours ago [-]
On this and Video Assistant Refereeing in football/soccer, the Swedes seem to have just the right approach. We'll use it, but only if it's good, and if it isn't good any more, we'll stop. How simple!
shevy-java 55 minutes ago [-]
Books have some advantages. I find it easier to concentrate
when reading a hardcopy book.
Nonetheless I myself transitioned primarily towards a digital-only
style of learning. It also has advantages, such as convenience.
brookst 37 minutes ago [-]
It’s sad to see HN take this at face value and parrot the “screens bad” view without understanding it.
I dug deep into this a while ago, starting with the “how legit is the science” question because I wondered if the studies had looked at any tradeoffs (e.g. did laptop use improve programming skills in ways paper books do not?)
It’s a rabbit hole. I encourage folks to read up and form more nuanced opinions.
This being HN I need to assure you that my learned skepticism regarding harms from screens in schools does NOT mean I want to ban all books in schools, strap toddlers into VR for their entire childhood, or put Peter Thiel in charge of all curriculums. Intuitively I think paper allows greater focus. But the data is not nearly as clear as politics-driven advocates claim.
Some info:
- The move back to books was a centerpiece of election policy by the center-right government, and is at least as much about conservatism as it is about science.
- Actual studies in this area are mixed.
- A lot is made of PISA scores, which dropped from the 2010’s to early 2020’a (when this policy became popular). But: the scores started dropping before 1:1 computers were rolled out, and also correlated with teacher shortages and education policy changes, and of course COVID. I could not find any studies that controlled for these other factors, and the naive “test scores can be entirely attributed to computers” view really doesn’t hold.
- There was a major change in pedagogy in Swedish schools that predates introduction of computers and seems like a better explanation for lower scores [1]
- One meta analysis does show a very small but stat sig decrease in reading comprehension for non-fiction when read from screens rather than books [2]
- Another meta analysis found zero difference between screens and books for reading comprehension [3]
- A third meta analysis found a tiny and decreasing negative impact from screen use, and some evidence that the effect is transitional as teachers and students adapt [4]
- The vast majority of studies in this area use no children at all, only adults. There are good ethical reasons for this, but it is a mistake to assume that a 25 year old’s reading comprehension from screens in 1995 is predictive of an 8 year old’s in 2026. [5]
- One of the few studies that did look specifically at children found that paper outperformed screens… but only in traditional schools. Homeschooling and lab testing did not show any difference between mediums [6]
I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media.
And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots.
What does that tell us?
Jobs was literally just parenting. Limiting screen time is something all parents should do. We also limit access to sugary foods and other things that can be damaging in excess. Calling tech executives hypocrites for having common sense parenting limits is not really a dunk.
I doubt that, but the others seem reasonable
I’d be super interested in the panels of experts that Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Altman (assuming GGP’s “asssumption” is correct) convened when making these decisions.
Absent that, this isn’t any more persuasive than saying that Coca Cola is good for infants because I assume Coke execs feed it to theirs.
More to the point - if the CEO of DogFoodCo won't let his own family pets eat any of his company's flagship products, then maybe smart dog owners should follow his example?
Like slaveowners who want kids, but also want slaves to make babies so you can have more slaves.
Point being, the focus should be on the policies themselves.
> In their book, ‘Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse is Making Our Kids Dumber,’ educators Joe Clement and Matt Miles write: “It’s interesting to think that in a modern public school, where kids are being required to use electronic devices like iPads, Steve Jobs’s kids would be some of the only kids opted out.”
"The Battle for Your Kids' Hearts and Minds" https://kidzu.co/parent-perspective/the-battle-for-your-kids...
An offline iPad with a limited set of educational apps/books would be a good classroom aid
Of course, an iPad without those limits is bad
The biggest problem is you get conditioned to instant and constant dopamine hits, which works directly against a lot of the things one is supposed to learn in school.
Kids learn the A-Z in record speed in 1st grade. But they don't learn to concentrate or that learning things can sometimes be challenging and the value of perseverance and that understanding eventually comes.
So in later grades they pay for learning the A-Z too fast through the iPad. Because they didn't learn how to learn.
The net effect in Norwegian classrooms over past 5 years of iPad education seems to be negative and it is not about what kids are exposed to. It is about not learning to concentrate.
On another totally unrelated note, this guy [1] that is not at all connected to the Epstein class whatsoever (he is) and is only an advisor to the leader of some some small little organization called the world economic forum says you and your children should be kept “happy” with drugs and video games.
Skip to the very end for the statement or listen to the whole little clip to hear how the demigods think about you and your children “worthless” children.
[1] https://youtu.be/QkYWwWAXgKI
> What does that tell us?
It tells us three things:
1. Do not give a child access to iPads, social media or ChatGPT until they are old enough and are aware of their addictive nature.
2. Get them to read books as an alternative.
3. Being unable to restrict access to iPhones, ChatGPT to a child is a parenting skill issue and not the responsibility of a government to impose global parental controls on everyone for the purpose of surveillance.
Your kid will be the odd one out, missing some shared culture, left out of conversation or meetups they arrange in IM, etc.
The government should absolutely forbid social media and addictive games to kids under 16, otherwise it’s very hard as a parent to escape these little addiction machines and you can only try to limit damage.
Of course, we have to find a way that is not damaging privacy at the same time.
(If you don’t have kids or have kids that are under ~10, you do probably not know what the pressure is like… yet.)
So the kids will continue to be harmed. EdTech will get money because this time they will do it right. AI will lead to a new thoughtless generation.
I had never even realized.
As a bonus I now also see cranks proposing to raise other peoples children in some kind of sweatshop calling it education and schools. As if that was ever the goal.
Naturally, the kids should learn AI and AI workflows also. And personal AI assistants can probably help many kids in their studies. Learning AI should be its own subject but that should not ruin the way kids study other subjects where there are proven old ways to get to great results.
Source: I have 10 Finnish kids
Edit: FYI: an old (2018) link to an article about a finding about the matter: https://yle.fi/a/3-10514984 "Finland’s digital-based curriculum impedes learning, researcher finds"
No one needs training in prompting AI. I could understand if they meant a deeper layer of integrating tech with systems but all they ever mean is typing things in to a text box.
In other words, the aim is to get kids used to using AI as soon as possible, so that they do not learn the skills to function without depending on it.
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
It seems to me that if someone can read and think critically-- they can RTFM and get much better much quicker at computers and AI than people who spent all their time tapping an ipad to watch the next video.
It would take a few sessions at most to take someone from 10 years and get them fully up to speed with AI tools since they have zero learning curve.
Addiction is a much harder problem than distraction.
I've used them when studying new languages (human languages not programming languages) and ML algorithms and they've been really useful.
Learning to check the citations it gives you is a useful skill too. I wish many adults were more sceptical about the things they are told.
This would be just the modern version of "Computer class" back in the day when we learned to use word, excel, etc. Just another tool among others that is helpful to learn but should be limited to that specific class.
Though actual sad thing learning from friends with kids is that the modern "computer class" does not actually teach kids to use computers much these days.
Kids are using crappy subscription education services for homework and doing all their reading on screens (and educators are toiling away to work with these systems) because the people who make money off the services and screens paid to have the incentives distorted such that buying their products is the least shitty option.
The main problem mentioned in the article you link to seem to be distraction from what they were supposed to be doing.
Distraction is not always bad and kids can learn a lot by being distracted by something that catches their interest. it depends on the approach and its more of a problem following a fixed curriculum in a classroom. Probably more of a problem for uninterested or younger children.
I think video can be a big problem, particularly given the tendency of sites to try to keep you there.
https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/endrer-skolehverdagen-... [link in Norwegian, no English source available]
I'm so lucky I didn't have this in the classroom.
E readers work for a reason. You aren’t distracted (the slow browser in it is hardly a distraction)
The part nobody talks about is textbook cost. Digital textbooks were supposed to make education cheaper but somehow the subscription model made it more expensive. At least a physical book you buy once and it sits on the shelf for the next kid.
Btw when you damaged a book beyond repair, you needed to pay the full price. Only the exercise books needed to be bought freshly as they were "used up" fully after the year. Still, they were often seen as optional.
Reading and writing, maybe, but numeracy? With a computer, you can get instant feedback, immidiately see whether you did the math correctly or not. With a textbook, you have to wait for your teacher.
I just don't think "instant feedback" is as important as we think in mathematics education, and might even rob us of moments to practice mathematical behaviours like justifying, communicating and accommodating. Slow feedback does have benefits.
I am a tech enthusiast to put it mildly. I also taught maths in schools from roughly 2010 to 2020 so saw the iPad/app revolution in my classrooms. Anecdotally, I think it made my lessons and my students worse. Books, paper and each other are the best tools (in my very personal opinion).
Where is this rush for instant feedback coming from?
There's a major issue though, which is that course material get designed for use on computer screens first. But I have good hope that llm-based pipelines should help fix this issue.
But equally it's really helpful to be able to ask ChatGPT or whatever for a different explanation when you get stuck - but that is probably better done at home when studying the homework. It stops you getting frustrated and helps keep you making progress and in the 'flow state'.
I guess a big problem for schools now will be how to get them to use AI to help them learn rather than simply getting it do to their homework so they can go and play video games or whatever. I know if I'd had it as a kid I would've been tempted to do the latter.
Yeah sure, then get a (sometimes) wrong answer with high confidence and believe it?
But yeah, it's not infallible and sometimes even when it gives you a source it will incorrectly summarise it, but you can double check the information in the source itself.
It just makes it a lot easier to do quickly rather than having to go and find the right Wikipedia article or dig through lots of documentation. Just like Wikipedia and online docs made it easier than having to go to the library or leaf through a 500-page manual etc.
If you are just asking basic science questions or phone reviews then its pretty reliable.
https://www.worldreader.org/
When I got to college a few years later I’d sit in the back of classrooms and see that a majority of students who’d brought a laptop (ostensibly for notes) were consistently distracted and doing something else, be it games or StumbleUpon. I can only imagine these decisions were made by groups of adults sitting around conference rooms, each staring at their own laptop and paying 20% attention to the meeting at hand.
This is the right decision and should be to go back to the basics, instead of full computer everywhere including iPads, phones and laptops.
Remember the big tech founders / CEOs do not give their kids access to social media, iPads, phones for a reason.
Replacing a paper book with the same pdf on an ipad screen though, has to be one of the most stupid ideas anyone could come up with.
Nonetheless I myself transitioned primarily towards a digital-only style of learning. It also has advantages, such as convenience.
I dug deep into this a while ago, starting with the “how legit is the science” question because I wondered if the studies had looked at any tradeoffs (e.g. did laptop use improve programming skills in ways paper books do not?)
It’s a rabbit hole. I encourage folks to read up and form more nuanced opinions.
This being HN I need to assure you that my learned skepticism regarding harms from screens in schools does NOT mean I want to ban all books in schools, strap toddlers into VR for their entire childhood, or put Peter Thiel in charge of all curriculums. Intuitively I think paper allows greater focus. But the data is not nearly as clear as politics-driven advocates claim.
Some info:
- The move back to books was a centerpiece of election policy by the center-right government, and is at least as much about conservatism as it is about science.
- Actual studies in this area are mixed.
- A lot is made of PISA scores, which dropped from the 2010’s to early 2020’a (when this policy became popular). But: the scores started dropping before 1:1 computers were rolled out, and also correlated with teacher shortages and education policy changes, and of course COVID. I could not find any studies that controlled for these other factors, and the naive “test scores can be entirely attributed to computers” view really doesn’t hold.
- There was a major change in pedagogy in Swedish schools that predates introduction of computers and seems like a better explanation for lower scores [1]
- One meta analysis does show a very small but stat sig decrease in reading comprehension for non-fiction when read from screens rather than books [2]
- Another meta analysis found zero difference between screens and books for reading comprehension [3]
- A third meta analysis found a tiny and decreasing negative impact from screen use, and some evidence that the effect is transitional as teachers and students adapt [4]
- The vast majority of studies in this area use no children at all, only adults. There are good ethical reasons for this, but it is a mistake to assume that a 25 year old’s reading comprehension from screens in 1995 is predictive of an 8 year old’s in 2026. [5]
- One of the few studies that did look specifically at children found that paper outperformed screens… but only in traditional schools. Homeschooling and lab testing did not show any difference between mediums [6]
1. https://www.edchoice.org/is-swedish-school-choice-disastrous...
2. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/screen-reading-worse-for-c...
3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15213269.2022.2...
4. https://oej.scholasticahq.com/article/125437-turning-the-pag...
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03601...
6. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0034654321998074