Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath’s recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation warning about the rapid expansion of EdTech and the explosion of student screen time should spark an important national conversation about learning, cognition, and the future of education.

The evidence he presents is compelling and deeply concerning.

Across developed nations, cognitive performance among young people has stagnated or declined in critical areas including literacy, numeracy, attention, reasoning and problem solving. At the same time, schools have undergone a massive digital transformation. Devices now dominate increasing portions of instructional time, assessment, homework and student attention.

The pattern Dr. Horvath highlights is difficult to ignore: more classroom screen exposure is generally associated with weaker academic outcomes, not stronger ones.

He is right to sound the alarm.

But the answer is not banning technology, regulating childhood into submission or treating screens themselves as the enemy.

The real question is far more important:

What kinds of cognitive habits are we building?

Every environment trains the brain for something. The issue is not whether children use technology. The issue is whether that technology strengthens the capacities human beings most need to learn, adapt, create and thrive.


The Brain Adapts to What It Repeatedly Does

Human brains are extraordinarily adaptive. Neuroplasticity ensures that repeated experiences physically shape neural networks over time.

When children spend hours each day rapidly switching attention, scrolling, checking notifications, multitasking and consuming fragmented streams of information, the brain adapts to those conditions.

Unfortunately, those conditions directly conflict with the cognitive demands of deep learning.

As Dr. Horvath explains, repeated task switching weakens sustained attention, creates competing mental demands, and undermines memory formation. The problem is structural, not moral. This is not about children lacking discipline or motivation. It is about conditioning attentional habits that make sustained thought increasingly difficult.

Modern digital environments are functioning as large-scale attentional training systems. But there is another layer to this problem that may be even more concerning.


What We are Training Children to Become

Much of modern digital experience is built around externally controlled prompts.

Children are constantly being cued to:

  • tap here
  • respond now
  • watch this
  • scroll again
  • click next
  • answer immediately
  • shift attention
  • react

The brain adapts to these conditions.

Over time, this can subtly condition children to become passive responders rather than active learners. That distinction matters enormously.

Strong learning depends upon initiative: asking questions, generating ideas, tolerating uncertainty, planning, reflecting, experimenting and persisting through challenge without constant external prompting.

But many digital environments train the opposite habit pattern: wait for the next cue.

This is not preparing young people for a future that increasingly values adaptability, innovation, independent thinking, collaboration and self-direction.

It risks conditioning compliance over agency. Reaction over reflection. Consumption over creation. the concern is not merely academic performance. It is the long-term development of human capability.


Not All Screen Time is the Same

One of the most important distinctions often missing from public discussions is that “screen time” is not a single category.

Watching short-form entertainment videos, rapidly switching among apps and passively consuming digital media are fundamentally different from structured experiences specifically designed to strengthen cognitive processes.

Even Dr. Horvath’s testimony acknowledges that tightly constrained adaptive digital tools can produce meaningful gains in defined areas.

The problem is that most educational technology has been designed around content delivery, engagement metrics, convenience or entertainment logic — not around the architecture of cognition itself. This distinction helps explain why a small subset of digital learning experiences may actually strengthen cognition rather than fragment it.

Comprehensive Integrated Cognitive Training (CICT®) represents a fundamentally different approach. Rather than fragmenting attention, properly designed cognitive training systematically strengthens the very neural processes that modern digital environments often weaken:

This differs fundamentally from what most people think of as EdTech. It is targeted neurocognitive exercise designed to improve the brain’s capacity to learn.

And unlike passive screen consumption, effective cognitive training is intentionally effortful. It requires learners to sustain attention, adapt strategies, hold information mentally, inhibit impulsive responses, recognize patterns, solve problems and persist through difficulty. Dr. Patrick Fuller, assistant superintendent at Indiana’s John Glenn School District, described observing students engaged in CICT as experiencing productive struggle — sustained cognitive effort that challenges learners while building capacity.

In other words, it exercises the brain systems that support initiative, learning and self-directed thinking rather than reinforcing passive reactivity.

The distinction is critical: some technologies fragment cognition while others can strengthen it.

The future of education should not revolve around reducing all screen use equally. It should revolve around identifying which experiences weaken learning capacity and which experiences build it.


The Encouraging News: Cognitive Decline is Not Fixed

Perhaps the most hopeful implication of current neuroscience is this:

If cognitive habits can deteriorate through repeated conditioning, they can also improve through repeated conditioning.

Brains remain highly changeable.

We are not witnessing permanent damage to an entire generation. We are witnessing the consequences of environments that increasingly train distraction over concentration, reaction over reflection and consumption over cognition.

That means the trajectory can change — and potentially much faster than many people realize.

Research on comprehensive integrated cognitive training has repeatedly shown that relatively small amounts of intensive practice can strengthen underlying cognitive skills in measurable ways that transfer into improved academic performance, greater independence, stronger executive functioning and increased confidence.

Rather than eliminating technology from learning environments, we need to rethink which digital experiences actually strengthen learning capacity and human development.


Learning is Not Just Cognitive. It is Social and Emotional.

At the same time, we should avoid making the opposite mistake: reducing learning to cognitive mechanics alone. Learning is not simply information transfer. It is a deeply social and emotional phenomenon.

Brains do not learn optimally in isolation, under chronic stress or in emotionally flat environments. Human learning evolved in relationships. Attention, motivation, memory and meaning are profoundly influenced by emotional state, social connection, stress regulation and psychological safety.

This is why the conversation about learning must expand beyond brain skills alone.

We increasingly need to think in terms of both brain skills and brain health.

Strong cognitive skills matter enormously. Attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility and reasoning are among the cognitive skills that are foundational to learning success. But emotional regulation, stress resilience, belonging, motivation, sleep, and mental wellbeing are equally critical components of human performance.

These systems are not separate. They constantly interact.

A child experiencing chronic anxiety, emotional overload, social disconnection or learned helplessness will struggle to fully utilize even strong cognitive abilities. Likewise, a child with weak cognitive processing skills may experience repeated frustration that eventually erodes confidence, motivation and emotional wellbeing.

The future of education cannot simply be:

  • more screens
  • more content
  • more personalization algorithms
  • more digital convenience

It must become more human.


The Future of Learning Requires Both Human Connection and Cognitive Capacity

The irony is striking.

At precisely the moment artificial intelligence and digital systems are becoming more powerful, the most valuable human capacities are becoming more important, not less:

  • sustained attention
  • critical thinking
  • adaptability
  • emotional regulation
  • social intelligence
  • reasoning
  • creativity
  • ethical judgment

These are not primarily content skills. They are human capacities. And they develop through a combination of healthy brain function, strong cognitive skills, emotionally supportive environments, meaningful relationships and intentional mental challenge.

Dr. Horvath’s testimony correctly warns us that many current digital environments are undermining these capacities.

But the answer is not fear of technology. Nor is it continuing to flood children with digital environments engineered primarily for engagement, convenience, compliance and behavioral reaction.

The real challenge is developmental.

Are we building brains that can think independently? Sustain attention? Adapt? Initiate? Collaborate? Reason deeply? Create meaning? Persist through uncertainty?

Or are we training young people to wait for the next prompt?

The most important educational question of the next decade may not be how much technology children use. It may be what kinds of minds are our environments shaping?

Technology aligned with human development can help strengthen cognitive capacity, support brain health and expand opportunity. Technology aligned with distraction, fragmentation and passive responsiveness will continue to erode the very capacities future generations most need.

The goal is not less humanity in learning. It is more.


About the authors

Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, a company that builds learning capacity through the practical application of neuroscience. She is an experienced educator and has studied the connection between neuroscience and education with Dr. Patricia Wolfe (author of Brain Matters) and other experts.

Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. Over the past decade, he has championed efforts to bring the science of learning, comprehensive integrated cognitive skills training and cognitive assessment, within reach of every person.

Roger and Betsy are co-authors of the bestselling book, “Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?


For Reference

Horvath, J. C. (2026). Written Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Neuroscientist and Educator.

Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself

Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). “Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(31), 11778–11783.

The Science of Learning: Revolutionizing Learning to Enhance Student Achievement and Well-Being, Presentation for the joint annual meeting of the Indiana School Board Association and the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, 2024

Effect of Neuroscience-Based Cognitive Skill Training on Growth of Cognitive Deficits Associated with Learning Disabilities …” Sarah Abitbol Avtzon. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal. 2012

[6] Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2016). Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience. W.W. Norton & Company.