Maybe on some level? But I don't think it's *ALL* about phones and screens. I may write about this more, but here are three main questions I have:
1. Why are we seeing these patterns in such young kids (9-year-olds)? Were there *that many* 9-year-olds with access to screens back a decade ago?
2. Why are we seeing these patterns only for the lowest-performing kids? Aka, why aren't the scores of the high-performers also dropping off? Surely they would also suffer from attention problems induced by phones and screens, no?
3. Why is this (mainly) a U.S. trend? Scores in Australia, England, Italy, Japan, and Sweden have all risen over this decade. A couple of other countries have seen some small declines (like Finland and Denmark), but no one has seen the declines like we've had in the U.S.
1. A decade ago was peak One Laptop Per Child era. What evidence is there out there that that's when Chromebooks and tablets started infiltrating elementary school classrooms? Beyond what happens in school, what evidence is out there that that's when parents started putting their kids in front of phones and tablets during those critical developmental years? Surely, a 7-year-old spending hours at home watching garbage on a screen has long term ramifications for that child's numeracy and literacy. And, no, I'm not talking about "Sesame Street."
2. Perhaps the extra enrichment activities that high-performers engage in (assuming, here, that these high-performers also come from higher socio-economic families) cancels out the detrimental effects of the screen time. Which is to say that maybe lower-performers (lower income students) aren't necessarily spending more time watching videos on YouTube, but that they have fewer opportunities to counter-balance that.
3. Surely this has to do with our schools. We know our reading curricula were garbage. What math curricula do those countries use? Perhaps our sub-standard curricula + screen exposure at a young age has exacerbated this whereas in those countries the stronger curricula was just enough to overcome early screen exposure. However, it might be interesting to see if there's any data anywhere about early screen exposure in different countries.
It’s the phones and screens.
Maybe on some level? But I don't think it's *ALL* about phones and screens. I may write about this more, but here are three main questions I have:
1. Why are we seeing these patterns in such young kids (9-year-olds)? Were there *that many* 9-year-olds with access to screens back a decade ago?
2. Why are we seeing these patterns only for the lowest-performing kids? Aka, why aren't the scores of the high-performers also dropping off? Surely they would also suffer from attention problems induced by phones and screens, no?
3. Why is this (mainly) a U.S. trend? Scores in Australia, England, Italy, Japan, and Sweden have all risen over this decade. A couple of other countries have seen some small declines (like Finland and Denmark), but no one has seen the declines like we've had in the U.S.
Thanks for the reply.
Of course the decline isn't monocausal, but:
1. A decade ago was peak One Laptop Per Child era. What evidence is there out there that that's when Chromebooks and tablets started infiltrating elementary school classrooms? Beyond what happens in school, what evidence is out there that that's when parents started putting their kids in front of phones and tablets during those critical developmental years? Surely, a 7-year-old spending hours at home watching garbage on a screen has long term ramifications for that child's numeracy and literacy. And, no, I'm not talking about "Sesame Street."
2. Perhaps the extra enrichment activities that high-performers engage in (assuming, here, that these high-performers also come from higher socio-economic families) cancels out the detrimental effects of the screen time. Which is to say that maybe lower-performers (lower income students) aren't necessarily spending more time watching videos on YouTube, but that they have fewer opportunities to counter-balance that.
3. Surely this has to do with our schools. We know our reading curricula were garbage. What math curricula do those countries use? Perhaps our sub-standard curricula + screen exposure at a young age has exacerbated this whereas in those countries the stronger curricula was just enough to overcome early screen exposure. However, it might be interesting to see if there's any data anywhere about early screen exposure in different countries.