The emerging picture is deeply unsettling: more schooling, more devices, and yet, in crucial ways, less thinking. Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath’s testimony forces a hard question: What if the very tools sold as “modern education” are eroding the cognitive foundations a society needs to survive? When reading, focus, and memory decay, so does a nation’s capacity to solve problems, govern itself wisely, and innovate.
This is not a simple generational gripe about “kids these days,” but a structural warning about how we’ve redesigned childhood around screens. If humans learn best from other humans, then replacing teachers, books, and quiet struggle with apps and algorithmic feeds may be a catastrophic mistake. Reversing course will demand courage: parents setting limits, schools unplugging, and policymakers choosing brains over buzzwords before the damage becomes permanent.
