# Senate Testimony: Jared Cooney Horvath (Jan 15, 2026) Back to [[Reverse Flynn Effect and EdTech]] · Witness: [[People/Jared Cooney Horvath|Jared Cooney Horvath]] · Post check: [[Post Analysis - Rainmaker1973 on Gen Z and the Flynn Effect (2026-10-23)]] ## The hearing - **What:** a full-committee hearing titled **"Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America's Youth"** ([committee page](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/meetings/chairman-cruz-announces-kids-screen-time-hearing/)). - **When and where:** Thursday, **Jan 15, 2026, 10:00 AM ET (9:00 AM CT)**, Russell Senate Office Building, room 253. - **Who chaired:** **Sen. Ted Cruz** (R-TX), with **Sen. Maria Cantwell** (D-WA) as ranking member. - **Official transcript:** printed as **S. Hrg. 119-472** ([GPO HTML](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-119shrg64111/html/CHRG-119shrg64111.htm)). Horvath's oral statement is on p. 25 and his prepared statement on p. 27. His answers to Cruz's written questions are on p. 85. - **Witnesses** (in speaking order): 1. [[People/Jean Twenge|Dr. Jean Twenge]], Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University 2. [[People/Jared Cooney Horvath|Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath]], Director, LME Global 3. [[People/Emily Cherkin|Emily Cherkin]], Author and Founder, The Screentime Consultant; on the faculty of the University of Washington 4. [[People/Jenny Radesky|Dr. Jenny Radesky]], Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School - **Senators who spoke** (in transcript order): Cruz, Cantwell, Curtis, Klobuchar, Schmitt, Hickenlooper, Moreno, Baldwin, Sullivan, Luján, Blackburn, Markey, Young, Schatz, Kim. - Committee press release: ["Experts Tell Committee AI Presents Greater Risk to Children Than Social Media"](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2026/1/experts-tell-committee-ai-presents-greater-risk-to-children-than-social-media). - **Reach:** Chalkbeat (Mar 17, 2026) reported that the testimony had been "viewed well over 2 million times on C-Span's YouTube page." ## Oral statement: key passages (verbatim from S. Hrg. 119-472) - Opening: "I am a former teacher-turned-cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning, and I do not receive funding nor have I ever from Big Tech." - "So a sad fact our generation has to face is this. Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. Since we have been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents…" - **"Until Gen Z. Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have, from basic attention to memory to literacy to numeracy to executive functioning to even general IQ even though they go to more school than we did."** This is the source of the post's central claim. No study was cited for it. - "What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development? It cannot be school… It cannot be biology." - "Across 80 countries… kids who use computers about 5 hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school." ⚠️ He did not give the dataset. It is presumably PISA, but I did not reproduce the figure. - NAEP: "take any state NAEP data, compare that to when that state adopted one-to-one technology widely, and watch what happens. The NAEP data will plateau and then start to drop." - **"Now, as Jean said, of course, this is all correlative. What we really want is causative."** - "we have academic research stretching back to 1962 that shows the exact same story for 60 years. When tech enters education, learning goes down." - He attributes a quote to [[People/Dylan Wiliam|Dylan Wiliam]]: "Ed tech is a revolution that has been coming for 60 years and we are going to have to wait another 60 because it is not doing anything." ⚠️ I did not trace this to a published source. - "we have evolved biologically to learn from other human beings, not from screens, and screens circumvent that process." - SAT example: "they redefined reading comprehension to mean 54 short sentences with one question about each. That is skimming. That is not reading… That is not progress. That is surrender." ⚠️ I did not check his description of the SAT format. ## Written (prepared) statement: structure Dated "12 Jan 2026" on the mirror copy. Official PDF: [commerce.senate.gov](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/Horvath_Written%20Testimony.pdf). - **Executive summary:** "Over the past two decades, cognitive development among children across much of the developed world has stalled and, in many domains, reversed. Literacy, numeracy, attention, and higher-order reasoning have declined despite increased school attendance and expanded public investment." It also calls this "a structural mismatch between how human cognition develops and how digital platforms are engineered to capture attention, fragment focus, and accelerate task switching." - **1. What Has Changed:** - "Beginning in the mid-2000s, this trend plateaued then reversed in many Western nations" (refs 2–6). - "Over half of our children now use a computer at school for one to four hours each day, and a full quarter spend more than four hours on screens during a typical seven-hour school day" (ref 7: Fittes 2022, *EdWeek*). - Students are "off-task for up to 38 minutes of every hour" (ref 8: Ragan et al. 2014). - **2. International assessments:** - PISA: "more screen time, lower performance," described as "monotonic." - TIMSS: the same pattern in younger students. - PIRLS: weaker reading with high classroom computer use. - He argues that apparent benefits for light computer users are artifacts of test mode (ref 9). - **3. Meta-analysis:** - He re-centers published EdTech effect sizes against [[People/John Hattie|Hattie's]] +0.42 average for "ordinary classroom instruction" (Adjusted = reported d − 0.42). - Results: General Learning −0.13 (398 meta-analyses, 21,155 studies). Online/Distance −0.22. Primary −0.03. Secondary −0.11. Intelligent Tutoring Systems **+0.10**. 1-to-1 Laptops −0.30. Disadvantaged −0.26. Literacy −0.09. Math −0.09. Science −0.18. Learning Disorders +0.05. - He notes himself: "Most EdTech meta-analyses report small positive effect sizes." - **4. Mode effects:** - Screen versus paper reading comprehension: −0.16 (10 meta-analyses, 377 studies). - Typing versus handwritten notes: −0.21 (4 meta-analyses, 238 studies). - **5. Mechanism:** task-switching costs (time, errors, weaker memory formation). "screens structurally train attentional habits that conflict with sustained learning." - **6. National implications:** workforce adaptability, innovation, "civic reasoning and institutional trust," competitiveness, public health. - **7. Seven recommendations:** 1. independent efficacy standards for federally funded EdTech; 2. mode-equivalence validation before moving tests to digital; 3. student data protections; 4. procurement transparency; 5. developmental screen-exposure guidelines; 6. a federal evidence clearinghouse; 7. longitudinal research funding. - **The written text does not contain** "Gen Z," "first generation," "200 years," "half their waking hours," or "accelerating post-2010." "Flynn" appears only in reference titles. ## Q&A highlights (Horvath) - **Australia-style under-16 social media ban:** "Yes." On Cruz/Schatz's KOSMA bill: "Absolutely. Step one." - **AI:** "ChatGPT is not good for learning… cognition goes down whenever we touch it" (K–12). - **Hickenlooper:** "Technology is a tool for experts to offload their skills… They are not tools for novices to learn how to become experts." On ICILS (2013, 2018, 2023), he said digitally literate kids "dropped 22 percent" while daily school computer use "has gone up 550 percent." ⚠️ I did not check these numbers. - **Baldwin**, asking which country gets it right: "Surprise surprise, Scandinavian countries. Sweden has banned most ed tech for primary years… Norway just followed suit and Finland is now--give them about 2 months." ⚠️ "Banned" overstates Sweden's policy. Sweden moved back to textbooks and reduced screen use; see [[Related Research and Trends]]. - **Moreno:** "before 18… flip phone or the school phone." - **Sen. Young:** He said face-to-face interaction releases oxytocin, while text-based communication releases "primarily tachykinins, which are the precursor to chemical depression." - ⚠️ **Partly supported, partly unsupported.** The oxytocin part resembles [Seltzer et al. 2012](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2011.05.004), a study of stressed girls. Those who spoke with their mothers in person or by phone showed oxytocin release; those who used instant messaging did not. - I found no source for the "tachykinins… precursor to chemical depression" claim. ## Questions for the record (Cruz → Horvath, p. 85) - On what screens displace: "the top three 'free time' activities in schools with screens are solitary gaming, texting, or listening to music," compared with talking, physical games and reading in schools without screens. He gave no citation ⚠️. - On E-Rate: "The vast majority of research into e-rate also suggests it has no impact on learning." He gave no citation ⚠️. ## Where other numbers in the post came from | Phrase in the post | Actual source in the hearing | |---|---| | "Gen Z… first time… general IQ" | Horvath, **oral** statement | | "accelerating post-2010" | Horvath oral ("around 2010"); Twenge ("around 2012") | | "Teens… over half their waking hours on screens" | **Sen. Cruz**, opening statement: "8 hours and 39 minutes… more than half of the time that a teenager is awake he or she is staring at a screen" | | "200-year trend" | Nobody in the hearing. ⚠️ Possibly from secondary coverage of his book. |