Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath: The Digital Delusion, AI in Schools, and Gen Z's Cognitive Decline

Every generation since the late 1800s has outscored its parents on cognitive measures. Gen Z is the first to break the streak, and Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath argues the classroom laptop is why.Jared Cooney Horvath is a teacher turned educational neuroscientist. He has researched and taught at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Melbourne, has worked with more than 1,000 schools around the world, and testified before the U.S. Senate on technology in schools. His book The Digital Delusion is out August 18 from Harmony, with praise from Jonathan Haidt, Johann Hari, and Anna Lembke. It lays out the case that when tech enters education, learning goes down.He sits down with generational futurist and USA Today bestselling author Ryan Vet to explain the mechanism. Learning moves in one direction: hard to easy. You learn to handwrite before you type. You learn arithmetic before you touch a calculator. Technology is built to do the opposite, to strip friction out and keep everything easy. That is a gift to an adult who already knows the thing. For a kid still learning how to become an adult, it is the surest way to guarantee they never learn it at all.His sharpest distinction is between offloading and outsourcing. Experts offload, because they can vet the output. Novices outsource, because they cannot. Same tool, opposite outcome. His sister-in-law is fit, so when her rented e-bike ran out of battery she pedaled home. Her husband is not, so he called an Uber. One had a skill the tool was extending. The other had a tool standing in for a skill he never built.Ryan brings his Loss of Friction thesis to the same problem. Spell check used to underline a word in red and leave you to solve it. Now a button rewrites the sentence and you did not write it anymore. Every generation gets friction stripped out in the name of progress, and the bill comes due in the generation after.In this episode:Why transfer is the whole ballgame, and why learning only travels hard to easyOffloading versus outsourcing, and the e-bike story that makes the difference obviousWhy AI tutors make kids better at AI tutors, and why the scores fall apart off the programThe biology of learning from another human, and what gets thrown out when there isn't oneWhy Millennials are more digitally literate than Gen Z despite never being taught"We've mistaken adult productivity for student learning"Why Jared says AI belongs nowhere in K-12, and why school itself is a giant banWhether it's too late for Gen Z, and what he hopes they do about itWhat reversion looks like: hard copy books, pen and paper, blue books, debateConnect with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath:The Digital Delusion (Harmony) is out August 18: order it hereSubstack: The Digital DelusionYouTube: @JaredCooneyGo deeper: Ryan writes about the Loss of Friction thesis in his COLLIDE newsletter, including the essay "What We Lost When Life Got Easier." Read it free at ryanvet.com/collide.Send us Fan MailAbout Ryan VetRyan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.Join 20,000+ Leaders for Weekly InsightsIf you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide