As college students, we have more technology at our disposal than any generation of graduates that came before us, and new advancements are being made every day. Just stepping into a lecture hall here at Binghamton University shows you the prevalence of technology in our education today — students take notes on laptops or use an iPad and an Apple Pencil to mimic pen and paper, and professors use advanced projectors to display their PowerPoint presentations, many even neglecting textbooks. Most class assignments are submitted online through Brightspace and classes are hosted on Zoom when professors feel ill or when too much snow has fallen to get to class safely, instead of just entirely canceling class. The more you explore campus, the more advancements you see in use. Technology has completely revolutionized the way we learn. Why would anyone want to return to the more “old-school” learning methods when we have all this technology and more at our fingertips every day?
After further investigation into that lecture hall, you’ll find technology is not all is as it seems. While some students use technology to note-take, others are online shopping, playing The New York Times games or doing work for another class. There are AirPods hidden in ears throughout the classroom, playing loud music and drowning out the professor lecturing. Some of the highest-achieving students in the class use applications such as ChatGPT to write their papers and PhotoMath or Socratic to solve their math and science equations. Phones are propped up on computers as students around the room attempt to text and Snapchat their friends without incurring the potential wrath of the professor, who is left begging for their students’ attention as they lecture. Students are paying so much in tuition just to attend class and not put in any effort because technology is always there to do it for them.
Even if some of these technologies were created to change the world for the better, their applications are, unfortunately, not always consistent with that goal. Technologies that are supposed to help students gain knowledge in their relevant areas of study are doing just the opposite, fostering laziness and allowing students to get by without a full grasp of the concepts being taught. We are sacrificing future talent in our professions by over-utilizing technology — our future doctors and lawyers are playing Wordle instead of learning the information for their future practices — and restrictions are necessary to preserve the value of education in our society.
The problem with technology damaging our education is not unique to college students and reaches back to the use of technologies in primary schools. As Jenna Skanberg of the Titan Times writes, “often, it is observed that too much time spent on technology has undesirable effects on young children and teens, whose brains are still developing,” especially influencing severe social determinants. These technologies “lower children’s frequency of interacting with their peers. This makes it more difficult for them to pick up on social cues and develop meaningful relationships with others.” By decreasing social interactions, technology not only damages children’s mental and social development, but also their quality of learning in schools, where a social environment is necessary to foster intellectual growth.
This is analyzed in a study done by Northwestern College, which concluded that using technology in schools increases children’s screen time and children exposed to a high amount of screen time are at “a higher risk of experiencing adverse health effects as well as learning deficits.” This is a concerning trend as technology is completely unavoidable these days, and both using and not using technology in schools can set back a child significantly compared to their peers, requiring the development of a precise balance for the utilization of technology in schools.
The impact of technology on higher education can be seen on college campuses worldwide in both educators and students. Technology is changing at a rapid rate, and educators are having a hard time keeping up — educators feel pressured to incorporate technology into their lessons in order to provide students with the most “up-to-date” learning experience, according to the aforementioned study by Northwestern College. Waffa Qurbani, a faculty member at Ontario Tech University, writes about how technological usage in universities causes educators to focus more on the use of said technology in their lessons rather than the quality of their teaching material. For example, in a typical classroom, you will often see educators stopping lessons to connect their laptops to the projectors or fiddle with a YouTube video that won’t play on the projector, taking away from the time dedicated to learning and causing unnecessary stress for themselves.
Along with this comes the potential for increased mental health issues among students and the increased necessity of students to multitask when they have access to laptops and other technologies in the classroom that can easily distract them from the work at hand. In an extremely contradictory way, students are feeling overwhelming pressured to do more all the time with every assignment at their fingertips.
It is clear that the use of technology in education can often cause more harm than good, showcasing the need to find a balance in the use of technology in the classroom. If limits on the use of technology in education are not implemented, students’ quality of learning will continue to decrease until it reaches a point of no return. Technology has the capacity to do good for education when used in the right ways, and the only way to ensure that is to cut back on how often we use technology and what we use it for in learning environments. Without restrictions, technology will forever destroy education, not just in the sense of learning quality but in the value of personal intelligence and enlightenment in our world.
Danica Lyktey is a freshman majoring in psychology.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.