On 15 January 2026, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that today’s students may be the first modern generation to score lower on standardized tests than their parents. He tied the trend to decades of putting screens in schools.

The claim, amplified in a Fortune report on classroom devices and falling scores, has reopened a long-running question: do classroom laptops, tablets and phones help students learn, or get in the way? The test data show real declines and several reasons not to pin them on devices alone.

What Horvath told the Senate about screens in schools

In written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee, Horvath argued that measures of attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function and general IQ have slipped among younger students even as they receive more formal schooling than past cohorts. He wrote that “most general-use educational technologies perform below the effectiveness of ordinary classroom instruction,” and that “indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them.”

The backdrop is decades of spending. The United States put an estimated $30 billion into laptops and tablets for schools in 2024, according to a Bloomberg Opinion analysis. The push dates to 2002, when Maine became the first state to run a statewide laptop programme; NPR’s review of the Maine initiative recorded 17,000 Apple laptops handed to seventh graders that first autumn, a figure that grew to about 66,000 devices by 2016. Maine’s own test scores did not rise over the programme’s first 15 years.

What the test scores actually show

Two datasets anchor the debate on screens in schools. The OECD’s “PISA 2022 Results” measured 15-year-olds across member countries and recorded the steepest fall in the assessment’s history: mathematics dropped 15 points against 2018 and reading fell 10 points, while science was broadly stable.

In the United States, the National Center for Education Statistics’ Long-Term Trend assessment found that 13-year-olds lost ground in both subjects.

The U.S. trend assessment tracks the same direction. Against the 2019–20 round, 13-year-olds fell 4 points in reading and 9 points in mathematics; against roughly a decade earlier, the gaps widen to 7 points in reading and 14 in mathematics. Scores had been rising until about 2012 before turning down, and the share of 13-year-olds who read for fun almost every day fell to 14%.

US 13-year-olds (NAEP Long-Term Trend)	Reading	Mathematics
Change since 2020	−4 points	−9 points
Change since about 2012	−7 points	−14 points

Source: NAEP Long-Term Trend assessment, 2023 (National Center for Education Statistics). The 2023 reading score for US 13-year-olds sits near its 1971 level; the maths score remains above its 1973 level.

The OECD notes that downward trends in mathematics and science were already visible before 2018 in several countries, and most analysts attribute the sharp 2020–22 drop largely to pandemic school closures. Devices are one candidate explanation among several.

Screens in schools and the distraction question

PISA 2022 found that students who reported being distracted by classmates using digital devices in at least some mathematics lessons scored 15 points lower in maths than those who said it rarely or never happened – a gap the OECD likens to about three-quarters of a year of schooling.

The same analysis found that student-led use of devices in class was negatively associated with results in reading, science and maths, while teacher-led or blended use tended to be more effective. The pattern points less to screens as such and more to how, and how much, they are used.

Research on out-of-school screen time mirrors that nuance. Systematic reviews describe a non-linear relationship in which moderate academic use can support learning, while heavier recreational use is linked to steeper declines in attention and attainment, with effects accelerating beyond about two hours a day.

Product design feeds the problem: a Baylor University study published in November 2025 found that TikTok demanded the least mental effort of the major short-video feeds, ahead of Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

What the evidence does and doesn’t show about screens in schools

Horvath’s argument has drawn careful scrutiny. A March 2026 Chalkbeat review of the evidence behind the viral anti-screen case found notable gaps. The correlation between screens and falling scores is correlational and coincides with the pandemic and with the spread of screens outside school. Chalkbeat also noted that the body of ed-tech studies Horvath cites is, on balance, positive.

His case rests on judging those gains too small relative to ordinary classroom instruction. Reviewers concluded that technology used with clear goals, teacher preparation and the right tools for the task produces measurable gains from preschool through high school across literacy and STEM.

That distinction – output versus learning, tool versus use – recurs across recent research. As covered in OECD warns AI can raise grades, hurt learning, a field experiment found generative AI lifted short-term performance sharply, yet students did worse once the tool was taken away. Test scores, finally, measure specific skills such as literacy and numeracy rather than intelligence in full, a caveat this original Fortune report also flagged.

The initial policy response

Schools and lawmakers have moved fastest on personal phones rather than school-issued devices. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that more than three-quarters of U.S. public schools have policies barring non-academic cellphone use during the school day, though enforcement varies.

State action has accelerated: 17 states had adopted “bell-to-bell” bans by August 2025, and by mid-2026 the count had grown, with New York implemented as the largest statewide bell-to-bell programme from autumn 2025 and further bills advancing. Tallies differ by definition – coverage in 2026 cited roughly 18 states with full bell-to-bell bans and about 26 with some statewide restriction – so the exact figure depends on how a “ban” is counted.

Bell-to-bell refers to a continuous block of time that spans from the moment the very first bell rings at the start of an event or shift, to the final dismissal bell.

Horvath’s proposals reach further than phones. He urged Congress to set efficacy standards that fund research into which classroom tools actually work, and to limit the tracking, profiling and data collection applied to minors using school technology. For schools weighing those choices, this site’s AI in Schools, a Practical Guide for 2025 and 2026 and OECD 2026: How Generative AI Is Transforming Education set out how intentional use and teacher preparation forms outcomes.

What also happened after the hearing

The January session, titled “Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America’s Youth,” fed a legislative push on two tracks. At the federal level, Chairman Ted Cruz and Senator Brian Schatz reintroduced the Kids Off Social Media Act, which would set a minimum social-media age of 13, bar engagement-maximising algorithms for users under 17, and press schools to remove phones from classrooms.

The Kids Online Safety Act and an update to children’s online-privacy law advanced alongside it: the Senate Judiciary Committee moved child-safety measures forward in late February, and further bills progressed in the Senate and a House panel in early March, though one House measure was pulled back to build bipartisan support.

The second track reached the classroom directly. A wave of state bills sought to cap classroom screen time and to require ed-tech products to demonstrate efficacy before schools could buy them – the standard Horvath had urged on Congress.

Utah and Alabama passed the first such laws, restricting screen time for early-elementary students, with Utah’s measure adding a state certification review for ed-tech tools. The ed-tech industry mobilised against the bills, and trade coverage described an “ed-tech backlash” building through the spring. The U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee held its own “Screentime in Schools” hearing, moving the screens in schools debate from a single Senate session into active law-making.

Background: the screens in schools debate

Jared Cooney Horvath holds a PhD and a master’s in education and has researched or taught at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School and the University of Melbourne. He directs LME Global, an education consultancy, has published more than fifty research articles, and wrote the 2025 book “The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning” where he directly addresses the screens in schools. His Senate appearance, viewed widely on C-SPAN, made him the most prominent voice in the screens in schools debate in a renewed push to limit classroom technology.

The wider evidence about screens in schools has not resolved into a simple verdict. Standardized scores have fallen in much of the developed world, the steepest drops align with pandemic disruption, and the clearest device-related harm in the data is distraction rather than the presence of screens in schools themselves.

That has moved the debate from whether to allow technology in schools toward how to govern its use – the same readiness-and-intentionality framing now advanced by the OECD and the World Economic Forum, and the question facing every district revising its phone and device rules through 2026.

Sources: U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (Horvath written testimony); OECD, PISA 2022 Results (Volume I); NAEP Long-Term Trend 2023, National Center for Education Statistics; Chalkbeat; Fortune

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