Why Critical Thinking is Disappearing - The Rise of EdTech Companies

A couple of months ago, I saw an article in the news saying that a school is making sure that every student has an iPad and a laptop, and they were boasting about it, but I think that that is a problem. There is a lot of research out there in the damage of what happens when digital technologies come into schools. We know that when students, especially younger students, get access to laptops and iPads, it increases distractibility, it reduces critical thinking, it reduces problem-solving skills. Academic achievement across the board tends to go down, and it's a complicated topic. And what I want to talk about is less about that research, because that is readily available and easy to find. What I want to talk about is something more along the lines of where I think there could be a solution, because the issue is not whether people have laptops or iPads, and it's sort of unavoidable. And instead, I think we need to be focusing on understanding why does introducing ed tech often harm learning outcomes, and number two, why it is honestly really hard to create good ed tech products. And this is coming from the perspective of someone who is a learning coach, as well as someone who makes ed tech products. And I think the easiest way to teach you about this is to put yourself in the position where you are making an ed tech product, and how you think about learners and learning outcomes in that context. From your perspective, there are two outcomes that you're trying to achieve, right? The first outcome you're trying to achieve is some kind of beneficial learner outcome. And second of all, because you are a business, you need to make money. So there is a financial benefit for you as the owner of this ed tech company. In order to make a product that achieves these goals, you have to have a clear understanding about what metrics allow you to know whether you are improving on these things. This one is easy. Learner outcomes, this is much more complicated. It's easy to measure, it's not often meaningful. So a really typical example of an ed tech product would be you have a content platform with a bunch of different videos and lessons, and so what are the things that you would measure? You would measure how often someone logs in. You might measure how often people come back to it, so frequency of visits, you might measure the duration of the sessions. And so you would say, hey, by introducing this product, we are seeing that your learners are logging in here twice a week, spending two hours a week on this platform. And because the stuff in here is valuable instructional material, that means that they are getting two hours of instructional learning and training twice a week. Therefore, this is good. None of these metrics lead to the actual learner outcome that matters, which is usually having knowledge that you can use in your brain or having problem-solving skills or having critical thinking skills. If you're teaching like a literal physical skill, the outcome that matters is that person's ability to use and implement the skill. Just because someone logs in, spends a lot of time on here and comes back to it frequently does not actually translate to that. And the issue is that this stuff is very easy to measure. This stuff is very difficult to measure, and it's very complicated. And in the research, the short answer is we still don't really know what are the best ways to measure true learner outcomes when it is not easy to literally test them on their achievement. And even when you do test them on their achievement, the way that the test is set up, that may also not be meaningful or translate to sort of the real benefit. So for example, you could create a test for someone after they've learned a subject, but does the fact that they've passed this test actually mean that they can perform on the job? Are they going to continue to do well in that subject moving forward? Have they developed the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed in that domain? These are things that are very difficult to measure. And so most of the industry is that they look at this and they say, this is just too hard to measure. All we have to do is measure the stuff we can measure, that's easy to measure, and present enough of a case to get it funded. And unless you are very in tune with the learning science, you generally don't actually see what the issue is with measuring this. And so for me, as a product creator who understands a lot of the learning science, understands how difficult this is, over the last three years, I've probably spent around two to three million dollars to figure out how to build learning products where it's not just about whether they're logging in, but really measuring, do they have the skill? Is that skill transferable? Is that skill resilient and long lasting? And the reason that this is so hard with digital products and digital technologies is because the learning happens without supervision. So in order for someone to go from a online learning platform to taking that stuff offline and applying it in their life where it really matters, which is where all the real learning happens, you can consume the information online, but you have to be in your own brain, thinking about it, working through it, problem solving, trying things out, getting that feedback, reflecting on it. Those processes happen inside someone's brain. It happens offline and there is very little visibility on that. And this process is also difficult. The person has to deliberately engage in effortful reflection and thinking to get better at this. And that is something that if you try to create a product that gets them to do that, it actually reduces these metrics because people don't want to do that. They move away from the effort so that they are less likely to engage. They don't want to come onto the platform anymore because every time they come onto the platform, they are punished by being forced to do something that's effortful, even if that effortful thing is a thing that's actually going to benefit them. And so coming back to the issue with how you integrate digital products in schools or workplaces, the issue is not about whether they have access to an iPad or a laptop because, again, it's inevitable. The issue is how are we teaching people to navigate voluntarily, proactively pushing themselves to do this type of thinking. When you look at studies around digital technologies and how people use digital tools, what you typically find is that the harm of laptops, iPads, reading and learning from screens almost becomes zero once you start teaching people how to actually engage with the material. When you teach people that all the beneficial things about learning come from that effortful process that you don't want to do, when you teach people to deliberately think actively even though it's more confusing and even though it's more effortful, then we see the harms of digital technologies come down so that it's almost negligible. The issue is, right now, we do not do that very well and so people engage with these digital technologies the way that they generally form habits around and most of those habits are formed outside of learning settings. If I'm scrolling through something on my phone, most of the time, I'm not thinking about that stuff in an effortful way and so I develop all these habits around if I'm learning stuff digitally, I tend to process it and think about it at this level. That habit starts forming and so now when we have to do something that's more effortful, when we're actually trying to learn from it, those habits fight against us and this is also the reason why I agree with banning these types of technologies for young children because for young children, their cognitive maturity, their neurodevelopment is not sufficient enough to learn the types of strategies that are necessary to do that kind of self-regulation. To feel that they innately, habitually want to do things at a lower effort, they want to skim through things and process things more shallowly, to recognize that emotion and then to reframe it and then to deliberately engage in a more complicated, effortful, active thinking process, that is a very sophisticated type of behavior. Even adults struggle to train that and so if we're introducing these technologies in schools where the students have not learned this, then all you're going to introduce is all the harms that come from developing those bad habits and that's going to become a debt that this person is going to have to repay later in life, unlearning all of these bad habits that have been set there for years. But here's the real issue, the real issue, the really dangerous thing that makes me want to make this video now is that the dangers are greater than it has ever been because now when you give someone access to these digital technologies, you're also giving them access to AI and LLMs. We're giving access to something that makes it easier than ever to avoid effortful thinking. Something that reinforces an avoidance of effortful thinking. If you have a question, if you're confused about something, you need an answer, you just chuck it into your favorite LLM, it spits out an answer and not only does it spit out an answer that makes you feel like you have knowledge and now the problem is solved, not only that but it also responds in a way that makes you feel good about it. We use AI to avoid effort and we are positively reinforced for doing that and that is the perfect recipe for forming habits. And so in my mind, generally I try to avoid black and white thinking because I feel that it's usually not accurate but I think we're at a point where we really need to be thinking about this in a black and white way. Either you start training intensively, explicitly as part of a major focus in the curriculum around how to do active deliberate thinking, the dangers of avoiding effortful thinking and then you continue to incorporate digital technologies and digital technologies training or if you're not ready to do that type of training, don't give them the digital technologies because the detriment and the risk that is potentially lifelong at developing those types of habits is extremely high, in fact almost guaranteed. And I have personally seen with the clients that I work with, professionals, experienced professionals who have years of experience under their belt, have their cognitive ability and their critical thinking and their problem-solving ability decline precipitously within the And the studies that are coming out show that you have to be very careful about the way that you use these technologies because if you're not careful, your brain will adapt. And so I genuinely believe with the direction that modern education is taking, I think that modern education is failing the next generation. We need to have real discussions about actual solutions. What are we literally going to implement to protect that generation? Because otherwise, by default, the harm is going to happen. These are the conversations that we need to start having. And it's something that I feel really passionate about. But it affects all of us. I'm interested to know what's your experience? What do you think about this issue? And what do you think we need to do to start solving this tomorrow? I want this video and especially the comments below this to be that place to have some of these discussions. And whether you agree with me or disagree with me, I welcome it all. Let's just talk about it. Because the alternative is that we don't and nothing happens and nothing changes.