After $30 billion in school tech, the laptop classroom experiment may have backfired

Schools went all-in on laptops – now test scores are telling a different story

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A hot potato: More than two decades after schools began wiring classrooms and handing out laptops, the promise of technology as an educational equalizer is being reconsidered. A generation that grew up swiping, clicking, and typing through lessons is now showing signs of cognitive decline unseen in modern history, according to new scientific testimony and global learning data.

The shift began in Maine in 2002, when then-Governor Angus King launched a program that put Apple laptops in the hands of every middle schooler.

By 2016, that initiative – hailed as a digital revolution in education – had expanded to 66,000 devices. It was a model the rest of the country would come to copy. By 2024, the US had spent more than $30 billion distributing laptops and tablets to students nationwide.

Two decades later, however, educators and neuroscientists are warning that something has gone wrong.

In written testimony before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath argued that Gen Z is the first modern generation to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one. Those scores, from the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment and other global exams, offer more than a measure of classroom aptitude – they chart a cognitive backslide.

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows a similar pattern among younger students. Frequent in-class computer use correlates with significantly lower math and science performance across both high-income and middle-income countries

Horvath pointed to an inverse relationship between the time students spend on digital devices in school and their academic performance. The more screen exposure, the poorer the results. While early laptop initiatives aimed to democratize access to information, the constant availability of technology seems to have weakened students' ability to sustain focus and engage in demanding intellectual work.

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"This is not a debate about rejecting technology," Horvath wrote in his testimony. "It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works. Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them."

Evidence of this breakdown surfaced years ago. In 2017, Fortune reported that Maine's public school test scores had stagnated during the 15 years of its laptop program. Then-Governor Paul LePage went so far as to call the initiative a "massive failure," even as state contracts with Apple continued.

The pattern extended beyond Maine. Nationwide, the surge in school-issued devices changed how students worked, and how they didn't. A 2014 behavioral study observing 3,000 university students found that nearly two-thirds of their time on laptops was spent on unrelated activities. The distraction was costly: every interruption, researchers found, delayed refocusing and led to weaker memory formation.

A later survey by the EdWeek Research Center in 2021 found that most K-12 teachers were using educational technology between one and four hours a day, with a quarter reporting five hours or more. The data underscored a paradox: even when digital tools were meant to support learning, they often opened wider paths to distraction.

Horvath is sounding alarms not only about academic outcomes but about humanity's intellectual resilience in the face of complex global challenges. He warns that society cannot afford a generation that struggles to sustain deep attention or wrestle with ambiguity.

"Unfortunately, ease has never been a defining characteristic of learning," Horvath told Fortune. "Learning is effortful, difficult, and oftentimes uncomfortable. But it's the friction that makes learning deep and transferable into the future."

The stakes extend beyond classrooms. A Stanford University study published in 2025 found that generative AI was already reshaping the labor market, disproportionately affecting early-career workers – mostly Gen Z. When education systems fail to cultivate adaptability and higher-order thinking, automation's disruptions hit harder.