Featured Reflections #1

Lately, in the media there has been a focus on the possible discrepancies between the turn of the century expectations for digital learning and the current investigations into the results. For the last seven or eight years teaching professionals, neuroscientists and parents have been noticing a decline in reading ability. As of 2026 there has been agitation and general concern at reports such as The New York Post article which stated a statement from neuroscientist Dr Cooney  “Gen Z  underperformed on basically every cognitive measure, from basic attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function and general IQ”. Numerous studies over the last eight years have shown one of the possible reasons for this decline.

My own experience working with with 0-5 year old children echoes this. I have observed babies under twelve months  fixating on the prescence of an iPad, crawling towards them and showing scrolling skills. For slightly older young learners this is exhibited by an obsession with gaming over print, and a lessening ability to focus on school readiness activities. This is particularly obvious when I am trying to teach literacy to neurodiverse children. My feelings about digital technology have become problematic.

Evaluation of the problem comes through various studies in the last couple of years. A pointed question by The Guardian in 2024 asks what does it mean that schools have gone digital. It answers that, in a USA study the results found that text comprehension skills of thirteen year old students had declined by an average of four points. Neuroscientists from Columbia university had found after studying brain responses that shallow reading was observed when some students read on a screen. Anne Mangan states in “Reading both expository and complex texts shows a superiority of retention and comprehension from paper rather than screen texts.”

One exhaustive and wide ranging study (Igor Perez et al 2023) compared reading outcomes in sixteen to eighteen year old students including many outside factors such as SES and gender came up with results that were not definitive but  did show there was a slight negative correlation (r=0.06) with digital reading. However, there were some areas that did show significant difference in results between digital and paper options. Poor readers did worse, had poorer recall, less attention and understanding when working with screens than paper versions.

Analysis of various studies by Lidia Altamura (2024) states that digital devices can enhance engagement because of interaction, offer the ability to find recent material and improve accessibility to visual modifications. Two meta analyses (with half a million participants from thirty six countries) showed slightly worse reading outcomes.

 In conclusion, Altamura’s estimation is interesting -   young children who spend ten hours reading books or magazines will exhibit six to eight times higher comprehension levels than those spending the same time reading on digital devices.

My reflection on these studies is that I would expand my use of story and picture books and encourage children to hold the books, turn the pages, see the beginnings and the end of the story.