February 22, 2026
Kids fried, parents terrified
$30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents
‘$30B down the drain?’ Internet blames phones, bad teaching and clueless parents for “dumb laptop generation”
TLDR: A big study says $30 billion in school laptops and tablets may have helped create a generation scoring lower than their parents, and the internet is furious. Commenters blame everything from smartphones and lazy teaching to broken education policies, with some demanding zero-tech classrooms and others calling it a wider societal failure.
The article claims the U.S. spent $30 billion swapping textbooks for school laptops and tablets, only to end up with the first generation scoring worse than their parents on big international tests. But in the comments, people aren’t just side‑eyeing the laptops – they’re going to war over who actually broke kids’ brains.
One camp, led by telman17, says the laptops are just props in a bigger disaster: teachers teaching via software, parents screaming if little Johnny can’t play games in class, and schools too scared to enforce rules. Their fix is simple and brutal: “ban phones from class.” Others, like jacquesm, are even more hardcore: throw all the gadgets out and go “back to paper,” arguing that kids need to learn to think before they learn to click.
Then the nostalgia squad shows up: gdelfino01 wants to resurrect the ancient Apple IIe so kids code turtles for an hour a week and then touch grass the rest of the time. Meanwhile, Herring says the real issue is biology: humans learn best from humans, not apps, comparing language apps to tossing someone in China and letting friends do the teaching. And hedora blames decades of test-obsessed school reforms, asking if this is really a laptop problem or just America finally flunking Education 101. The vibe: nobody agrees on the solution, but everyone agrees something’s gone seriously off the rails.
Key Points
- •Maine launched a statewide laptop initiative in 2002 under Governor Angus King, initially distributing 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders in 243 middle schools.
- •By 2016, Maine’s program had expanded to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to students across the state.
- •By 2024, the United States spent more than $30 billion on providing laptops and tablets in schools, aiming to replace or supplement traditional textbooks.
- •Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations despite unprecedented access to technology.
- •Horvath, citing PISA data, said Gen Z is the first modern generation to score lower than the previous one on standardized tests measuring skills like literacy and numeracy, which he describes as indicators of cognitive capability that has declined over the past decade.