A Digital Delusion?
Civics of Technology Announcements
Upcoming Book Club: We’re reading Critical AI in K-12 Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Cultivating Justice and Joy by Stephanie Smith Budhai and Marie Heath. Join us on Wednesday, March 4th at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. You can register on our events page.
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By Michelle Ciccone and the Civics of Tech Crew
For Civics of Technology’s April book club, we’re going to read a book that we have mixed feelings about. The book is called The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning—and How to Help Them Thrive Again, written by neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath. It has been gathering some attention in popular media, and we think it is worthwhile to discuss, if not necessarily endorse.
The Digital Delusion has some similarities with The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, although this time for EdTech. The Anxious Generation is Jonathan Haidt’s influential but controversial 2024 book: influential because the direct relationship Haidt charts between use of smartphones and a mental health crisis for adolescents has set off an intense public conversation (arguably contributing to the trend of phone bans in schools); controversial because researchers point out fundamental problems with Haidt’s reading of the research on this topic and call into question his conclusions. As Candice L. Odgers, one of the leading experts on adolescent development and technologies, begins her book review in Nature,
“Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.”
Horvath cites The Anxious Generation in The Digital Delusion, and he seems to chart a similar course as Haidt in his critique of EdTech - which made us both curious and skeptical.
We at Civics of Technology are researchers and practitioners who are deeply passionate about understanding the many harms of EdTech, and we are committed to research and practice that helps educators, students, and families imagine and work towards teaching and learning contexts that actively confront and are ultimately free from these harms. But, learning from the experience of The Anxious Generation, we also believe that any public discussion should be rooted in an accurate understanding of the problem, or else we run the risk of working towards solutions that don’t actually or don’t fully address the many harms of commercial EdTech.
With all of this in mind, we invite the Civics of Technology community to join us in a book club discussion of The Digital Delusion on Wednesday April 22 at 7pm ET. You can register here. Our aim is to host a generous and critical read of this new book, taking its arguments seriously as we imagine a critical EdTech movement in conversation with the book’s argument and main ideas.
Below are a few questions that we are interested in discussing during our book club, and we invite you to consider them as you read. You can also read Jacob’s notes on the book.
How is Horvath defining “the problem” throughout the book? What is left out of his problem definition? How do you define the “problem” of EdTech?
Who is Horvath’s audience? Why do you think that? What range of ideas and experiences might this audience be coming to this book with?
What kinds of research is Horvath citing throughout the book? Who is he in conversation with? Who is he not in conversation with? What is the impact of these citational choices?
How broad or sweeping are Horvath’s claims? How does he allow for nuance, gray area, or complexity? What nuance, gray area, and complexity might he be missing?
What impact do you think this book might or could have on the public discussion about EdTech? What kind of critical EdTech movement does the book seem to be building towards, or laying the groundwork for?