EdTech Can’t Deliver on Its Promises. This Actress Has a Simple Solution.

Published: July 14, 2026

School, classroom, technology, child — Getty Images/ SeventyFour

By Lillie Liska

Parents’ concern about educational technology (EdTech) continues to rise as their students suffer setbacks, but British actress Sophie Winkleman might have the solution.

“Many parents who see what screen-based learning is doing to their child are not buying this sales pitch,” Winkleman said at the The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in June.

She said parents are writing to each other, asking, “Where are the books? Why has my child’s education been reduced to a series of links, games, and videos? Why is my child accessing obscene content on his school-issued iPad? The school filters don’t work. Where is my child’s private data going? Why is my child online for his homework every night? He’s getting headaches. He’s getting cranky. He keeps going off task. He’s going to sleep later. And now he’s shortsighted.”

In short, parents feel, “I did not sign up to this.”

The EdTech boom began about a decade ago with the push to ensure every student had a computer. The trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But in that time, test scores declined and learning outcomes worsened.

“Initiatives that expand access to computers…do not improve K-12 grades and test scores,” a review of 126 research studies found. “[Furthermore], online courses lower student academic achievement compared to in-person courses.”

Educators have also noticed a shift how EdTech impacts their classroom environment.

“The Chromebook is just a world of distraction,” said Anna Soffer, a Los Angeles-area sixth-grade English and history teacher. “Every day, I’m battling, ‘Who would you rather listen to, Ms. Soffer or Minecraft?’”

The Los Angeles Unified School District, where Soffer teaches, recently became the first major school district to announce that it will no longer give devices to its youngest students, AP reported.

But the frustrations surrounding EdTech persist, and neuroscientist and educator Jared Cooney Horvath pointed to multitasking as the primary culprit for why students using tech experience poorer learning outcomes.

In an article for After Babel, Horvath said that most students spend 80% of their time on devices multitasking — i.e. playing video games, watching movie or TV clips, scrolling social media and listening to music. So, those have become the “primary function” of technology for them.

“It’s not that the students of today have abnormally weak constitutions; it’s that they have spent thousands of hours training themselves to use digital devices in a manner guaranteed to impair learning and performance,” Horvath explained.

So what’s the solution to dropping test score, declining cognitive abilities and shortening attention spans?

Winkleman says pens, paper, books and handwriting.

“Material read from a page in a book implants in the brain more profoundly than the exact same material read from a screen. We are physical beings. We must learn physically reading from a page in a book,” the actress said. “The feel of the paper, the design of the cover, the type face, the smell of the pages, the spatial position of a phrase on a page. All of these things contribute to the holistic embodiment of learning.”

EdTech promised to prepare students for the future, but it seems to have done the opposite. Hopefully growing pushback encourages educators to reevaluate tech’s place in the classroom.

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