A Back-to-Basics Approach to Learning: What "The Digital Delusion" Reveals About How Students Learn Best

By Elaine Griffin

Do you think AI promotes kids’ learning? Think again. The research is in, and the truth is undeniable: That line of tech-oriented and profit-driven propaganda is a con job, and buying into it hurts your kids and our students. 

Yes: With every market-driven reason to do so, technology companies increasingly promote artificial intelligence as a tool to accelerate learning—much as Facebook was once marketed as a tool that brought people together. 

But in "The Digital Delusion," Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist who specializes in human learning, argues that while tools like ChatGPT can complete complex tasks with minimal effort from the user, they are fundamentally tools of productivity, not learning. For experts in their fields, these tools can indeed sometimes boost productivity, particularly when it comes to routine tasks. So what? Productivity is not the same as learning. In fact, speed gets in the way of higher-order thinking. Deep learning is often slow and tedious.

This distinction matters, especially in early adolescence when students are in a critical stage of brain development. Middle school students are in the largest period of brain growth after ages 0–2. During this time, neural connections are strengthened through practice, repetition, reflection, and struggle. Learning that is slowed down rather than accelerated tends to be more lasting and transferable. Horvath captures this succinctly: “EdTech is the hare: fast and flashy, but quick to fatigue. Higher-order thinking is the tortoise: slow and steady, but ultimately more enduring.”

Horvath’s research challenges us to reconsider what we mean by “effective” learning in a digital age. First, he deconstructs the tech-sponsored myth of the “digital native,” noting that more than two decades of research show that young people do not learn differently because of their early exposure to technology. While students may have different learning preferences, such as preferring short videos or instantaneous feedback to other methods of instruction, the brain itself has not changed how it encodes or retains knowledge. Learning still requires time, effort, and cognitive engagement.

Horvath’s research has practical implications for middle schoolers because they are still learning how to learn. Below are four key takeaways from Horvath’s research that we are working to integrate more intentionally in our Middle School program.

Reading on Paper Beats Screens Every Time

More than two decades of research show that students comprehend and remember more when reading from paper than from screens, a phenomenon known as the “screen inferiority effect.” When relying on paper, readers are given spatial anchors on the page that support memory and cognition. When readers scroll online, the words have no fixed location. With anchors removed, readers tend to skim the content. The result is shallower processing, especially when students are reading to learn. Think about that the next time you consider whether to pick up an actual book or read it on Kindle. Your experience will be richer and deeper when you read from the physical book. Every time. 

Handwriting is More Effective than Keyboarding

Research consistently shows that handwriting produces stronger learning outcomes than typing. When students type class notes, they tend to transcribe what their teacher is saying rather than synthesize the material. Because students write by hand much more slowly than they can type, they are forced to summarize ideas and synthesize thoughts, two methods of deep cognitive processing. This “longhand superiority effect” is especially powerful when students review their notes for assessments.

Handwriting Promotes Literacy

Writing and reading draw on overlapping neural systems in the brain, so strengthening handwriting can directly support reading development. Brain imaging research confirms this: when young children write letters by hand, they activate the same reading circuits they will later use to decode text. When they tap keys on a keyboard, this doesn’t happen.

AI Short Circuits Learning

AI allows for what psychologists call “cognitive offloading,” or using machines to perform mental tasks. Horvath invokes a great metaphor to explain this: using AI is akin to sitting in a gym and watching a machine lift weights instead of lifting them yourself. While AI can complete tasks quickly, it prevents students from developing the underlying skills needed to perform those tasks independently. 

Experts who use AI may find it helps them be more efficient, but "experts often assume that the same tools they use to perform tasks efficiently will be equally useful for novices.” They don’t remember how long it took them to initially learn how to write, do research, or solve a problem. Novices need to develop these basic skills. There’s no AI shortcut for that. Middle schoolers are novices.

According to Horvath, one of the most “pernicious” arguments from technology companies is the claim that, with knowledge at their fingertips, kids no longer need to memorize facts. Instead, they falsely claim that students should learn how to write good prompts for AI sites and let AI handle the rest. After AI produces the paper or research, the student can then edit the work or judge the content.

This is nonsense. Higher-order thinking skills are built upon lower-order knowledge. In other words, students need to know smaller facts to do broader, deeper-level thinking. If students don’t have facts or ideas in their long-term memories to draw upon, “critical thinking collapses into guesswork.”

This is why students must learn how to do the intellectual heavy lifting themselves. They need to put their brain on the treadmill by working on how to gather sources, evaluate information, and write arguments. When students rely on AI to generate research or write essays, they often bypass this process entirely. Horvath compares AI to a helicopter that delivers students to the “summit” without requiring the arduous climb. They arrive at a finished product without understanding how it was created and without the ability to replicate it independently.

A student’s finished product matters less to us as educators than the process of learning itself. We want students to understand how to use library databases and print collections, how to cite and curate source material, and how to organize it all into an argument.

Our Commitment to Deep Learning

Ultimately, schools must be designed around teaching students how to learn, not around training them to robotically use flashy technical tools. If students can read deeply, write clearly, and think independently, they will be well prepared for the future and its ever-changing, often ephemeral tech fads.

Jonathan Haidt, the author of “The Anxious Generation,” characterizes Horvath’s book as “not anti-tech, but pro-learning.” We use tech thoughtfully in the Middle School when it puts kids in the driver’s seat, challenging them to code in their science classes, learn robotics through our after-school club, or create documentaries for National History Day. But when we allow students to be passive consumers of technology, we inhibit their growth.

This is why in our Middle School we will continue placing intentional focus upon how we use technology, with the end goal of aiming to use screens more judiciously. Horvath asks educators to understand that “low-tech” is “high rigor” and that “effort isn’t the enemy of learning—it’s the secret ingredient.” 

USM has never been about training our students to just glibly spit out answers. Its purpose, rather, has always been to teach our students how to ask hard questions. As Socrates suggests in one of Plato’s most famous dialogues, it’s only through exercising the mind—doing the hard work of moving toward an answer by learning how to formulate relevant questions – that we learn how to reason, becoming fully human rather than robotic automatons. 

AI doesn’t do that and doesn’t even know how to do that. As has been true throughout its long and distinguished history, USM does, producing tomorrow’s leaders today, one class at a time.     

About Elaine Griffin:

Elaine Griffin has worked at University School of Milwaukee since 1998, serving as the head of Middle School since 2019. Previously, she served as the assistant head of Upper School and taught Upper School English. She has both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in English, and serves on the board of the United Community Center and the administrative board of Independent Schools Association of the Central States.