Schools Don’t Have a Smartphone Problem. They Have a Teaching Problem.

When societies don’t know what to do about their problems, they look for scapegoats — and these days, that’s likely to be one that fits in the palm of your hand, has a screen and emits notifications. The smartphone is now largely blamed for an educational crisis that began long ago, has much deeper causes and won’t be resolved by pretending that our children’s world can be left at the classroom door.

The Atlantic’s fascinating article, “What if it’s not the phones?”, about eminent evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray explains in academic terms something I’ve been advocating for practically my entire career: the problem isn’t technology, but our inability to educate with it, understand it and integrate it judiciously. Gray, who has spent decades studying how children learn from free playing — unsupervised by adults — now makes an uncomfortable argument: the need to explore boundaries doesn’t disappear when the environment shifts from the playground or the street to the internet. Children need to learn to make mistakes, negotiate, explore and make decisions in the world where they’re actually growing up, not in the nostalgic world that some adults idealize.

Gray’s thesis clashes head-on with Jonathan Haidt’s in his 2024 book “The Anxious Generation”, which is being used by those who prefer a ban to a difficult conversation. Haidt has popularized the idea that smartphones and social media have “rewired” childhood, causing a mental illness epidemic. Gray frames this as simply an update on the same old moral panic we’ve seen played out again and again since the 1950s. Whenever a problem involving children arises, adults’ automatic reaction is to take away yet another of their freedoms. In his critique of Haidt, he insists that the scientific literature is far from proving any causal link, and that confusing correlation with causation is a convenient way to look away from where we should be looking: at school, at academic pressure and at the impoverishment of learning.

That idea isn’t new to me either. In 2014, when discussing smartphones in school, I argued that textbooks are a relic of the past: a closed package of information in an era when information is ubiquitous, and education should teach students how to search for knowledge, then evaluate and apply it. Two years later, I wrote that devices are not the enemies of learning, and instead are powerful allies, if education is defined correctly, and that banning them only demonstrated a fear of the new and a lack of common sense. In 2021, I revisited the same issue: no, technology doesn’t cause terrible disruptions on its own; what causes problems is poor education followed by the search for a convenient excuse. And in 2025, I put it plainly: banning teenagers from using smartphones is the quickest way to create a society of ignoramuses.

I’m not denying there aren’t risks. Social media platforms are designed to capture attention, exploit impulses, amplify trash and turn vulnerability into screen time. The question is whether the smart response is to shield young people from that environment or to teach them about it. The National Academies report on social media and adolescent health acknowledges potential harms for some young people and certain uses, but also recognizes benefits and support, and recommends taking targeted action rather than imposing indiscriminate bans. Candice Odgers, writing in Nature, warns that the evidence on whether screen time explains adolescent anxiety and depression is mixed, and that an overly simplistic narrative can distract us from the real causes. The Oxford Internet Institute, after analyzing data from more than 430,000 teenagers in the United States and the United Kingdom, found very little evidence that the link between technology use and mental health problems has consistently increased.

Even when we look at school, the data compels us to think rather than shout. In 2025, the Pew Research Center found that the biggest source of stress reported by US teens was grades, ahead of appearance or social integration. The OECD warns that recreational use of devices in class is negatively correlated with performance, but that does not prove that the device is the problem; rather that a tool without an educational purpose in a poorly designed classroom, is distracting. Just as an absurd lesson or a system obsessed with testing rote memorization is distracting.

The same is true of the supposed “superiority” of traditional methods, now conveniently revived by some Nordic countries that are announcing a return to textbooks, pens, and paper as if they had just discovered the philosopher’s stone of education. Sweden, for example, has opted for more books and fewer screens, scaling back the use of digital tests in elementary school on the grounds that younger students learn better with printed materials. But the problem isn’t in recognizing that writing by hand, reading on paper, or working without distractions can have value — of course it does. The problem lies in turning that into an ideological crusade against technology and, above all, in subsequently measuring success using the same old methodologies. If you assess students with exams designed to reward literal repetition, short-term memory, and the ability to regurgitate what the pages of a book say, you’re not proving that the book is superior, you’re proving that the assessment system remains trapped in the book. It’s like judging a student’s intelligence by their ability to recite an encyclopedia in the age of AI. When the OECD analyzes the Swedish case based on PISA 2022, it doesn’t discuss paper’s intrinsic magic, it looks at much more complex issues: classroom disruptions, unequal educational use of digital tools, autonomy and teacher quality.

Confusing “higher scores on outdated tests” with “better learning” is one of the most dangerous pitfalls in the contemporary education debate. Swedish children are not smarter because they use pen and paper, nor do they learn better: they simply continue to perform as they did before on absurd memorization tests designed centuries ago, which serve no purpose in measuring anything.

A school that bans smartphones because they’re distracting is admitting its failure. It’s saying it doesn’t know how to turn a screen into a tool, teach students to verify sources, detect manipulation, protect privacy, understand algorithms, manage attention or distinguish information from knowledge. And that, in 2026, isn’t prudence, it’s negligence. Education is not about artificially preserving a past that no longer exists, but about preparing students for a complex present. Trying to train digital citizens in analog classrooms is like teaching navigation by draining the ocean.

In short, Gray isn’t suggesting we abandon children to the internet, just as advocating for free play doesn’t mean letting a child loose in the middle of a highway. He reminds us of something even more uncomfortable: growing up involves freedom, exploration, error and learning, and a childhood that is constantly monitored, regulated, scrutinized, and shielded from all risk produces dependent, fragile and easily manipulated adults. Technology has not created the educational crisis, it has merely made it visible.

The relevant question is not whether we should allow smartphones in class, but what kind of education we want to build around a reality in which these devices exist, accompany us and mediate our relationship with knowledge, work, and others. Blaming the smartphone is easy. Changing how we teach is very difficult. Is it any wonder so many people choose the former?

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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.

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