In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
My partner went back to school. The young person sitting next to him was snapping pictures of slides with her phone during lecture.
That feels like highlighting the entire chapter of assigned reading in pink.
What’s wrong with archiving slides so you can revisit them later?
When I was in college I did similar stuff because I benefited more from actually listening to the lectures instead of trying to keep up with taking notes.
Also, taking pictures is a good hack if you’re nearsighted.
But the worst thing I ever witnessed was a Gen Z girl searching Google for Yahoo, then searching Yahoo for Yahoo mail.
Reminds me of my wife’s cousin who would always search google for facebook then click the facebook.com link. Every time she wanted to go to facebook this is what she did. (This was on a desktop computer in pre-smartphone days.)
My friend is lecturing second year engineering students and they were all allowed one sheet at A4 paper for a cheat sheet (which they had to submit with their exam). One sheet was full of photos of the whiteboard taken from her phone. Suffice to say, the entire class failed the exam. Not because of the photos but because they didn’t know how to learn.
The average Gen Z are truly going to get smashed when they enter the workforce. The tech industry has stunted their psychological growth by a decade.
I’m seeing an incredible level of anxiety in young workers. Literal head in both hands “I just can’t with…”
I work in a multitasking environment. Everyone present has a constant todo list in constant flux with varying movement of items in that last that move up and down in priority strength.
There are now workers who freak the fuck out when a second task is presented for their list of one. Again, literal head in hands, “I just can’t”.
Someone’s going to die if they don’t start firing these low resilience, incapable fucks. “I just can’t” with their incompetence in organized thinking and emotional regulation.
I see this, “I just can’t deal” a lot in younger generations. I do wonder if they have been conditioned to respond like this due to social media overreaction videos and memes.
Prioritisation is a learned skill. So is communication, that way you can talk to others to determine a task’s priority if you can’t figure it out yourself.
Education systems really need a few classes on stuff like this, not just letting everyone experience the disaster of a “group project” for themselves.
I think it’s literally because they don’t have the mental stamina to deal with it. If they want to know anything, they just look it up and follow the steps. There’s no resilience or practice in retaining lots of information.
For example, I had to memorise a lot of phone numbers and addresses just in case I left my address book at home. I had to remember where things were so I wouldn’t get lost because I didn’t have access to a digital map.
I also went back to university and encountered all of this. I was floored when my classmate went to a YouTube video of someone reading the GitHub manual page rather than reading it themselves.
My friend who works with two Gen Z colleagues are absolutely addicted to their phones and get massive anxiety when talking to someone on the phone (which is a core part of their job). They also get huge anxiety with admitting that they’ve made a mistake.
We’ve failed an entire generation as a society.
Time spent with zero access to “the answer” is key I think.
Or photocopying pages from a text book to review at home later…