Editorial: When tablets replace literacy

Governments around the world, Malta included, are responding to the growing evidence of the significant effects social media has on children. Excessive screen-time coupled with the algorithmic fuel that pushes vulnerable groups to scroll infinitely for long hours are feared to be having generational impacts on young minds.

Commendable though this initiative is, the continued dependence of Maltese schools on various forms of ed-tech has also allowed even more screens into children’s lives. The digital pivot in education might be sacrificing the essential social fabric of learning, that is, human interaction – what defines the social contract of education.

In Malta, the digital transformation was primarily viewed as a way to modernise learning. For families who lacked expensive computer equipment at home, government-issued tablets and laptops, promoting accessibility and inclusiveness. Then, in the COVID-19 pandemic, ed-tech became the stopgap response to minimise disease transmission.

UNESCO’s groundbreaking book An Ed-Tech Tragedy? Educational technologies and school closures in the time of COVID-19 (2023) is a seminal critique on how the rapid, uncritical reliance on digital technology during the pandemic may have prioritised technology over the social and human dimensions of schooling.

Parents in Malta can attest to the resultant decline in the quality of instruction from this global rush to technology. Naturally there are benefits: homework diaries, ongoing assessments and parents’ meetings can comfortably be logged online.

What about the quality of digital content children receive for homework, a crude porting of physical materials to digital interfaces, with a lot of gamification to keep educational interest alive; or teachers delegating post-school lessons to YouTube videos that keep children locked on screens; and exercises that reinforce the dominance of smartphone apps as entertainment, rather than promote literacy?

The UNESCO report authoritatively outlines the detrimental effects on young learners’ cognitive development, with screen-based learning hijacking attention spans and deteriorating the capacity for concentration, affecting language and literacy acquisition. Individualised digital tasks have replaced unstructured, in-person play, which is the primary means by which children develop problem-solving skills, self-control and imagination.

Reading on digital devices is often filled with distractions, which short-circuit the development of deep reading and thinking – immersive, linear reading on paper is vital for forming the brain circuits used for critical thinking and personal reflection, all processes often bypassed when skimming digital content.

So, while tablets and laptops for children get dangled as political prizes by electorally-minded governments, we are seemingly unaware of the way this technology might be promoting automation rather than complex cognitive engagement.

Even outside of education, children’s use of the internet is prone to the proliferation of AI-mandated search results on the internet, where algorithmic systems are treated like ‘oracles’, providing only singular answers that discourage independent thought and inquiry.

Parents should show concern and raise the alarm. Students in Malta have scored less than the OECD average in maths, reading and science in the 2022 PISA assessment of 15-year-olds. In maths, the most recent results are worse than 2015: in reading, 64% of students in Malta attained Level 2 or higher – well below the OECD average of 74% – meaning that, at a minimum, these students can identify the main idea in a text of moderate length.

Only 4% of students scored at Level 5 or higher, that is, showing an ability to comprehend lengthy texts and establish distinctions between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues.

There is no doubt that, in Malta, students are experiencing similar losses in language acquisition and literary abilities. And that kind of education tragedy will be certain to reverberate for years, unless action is taken now to address this deficit.