By Ryan L. Schaaf
Many educators worry that today’s students do not learn the same way learners did in the past. These concerns often come from teachers with long classroom experience who find traditional teaching methods less effective with contemporary students. That perceived gap has ignited a broader debate about whether our instructional approaches need to change to serve digitally immersed learners.
Some researchers, educators, and policymakers have raised alarms about the amount of time young people spend with screens. Critics argue that excessive use of smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, televisions, and computers might dull independent thinking or reduce attention spans. While overuse is a valid concern, it’s equally important to recognize that children today use digital tools in fundamentally different ways than prior generations used paper, pencils, and chalkboards. Many young people engage in self-directed, just-in-time learning—seeking answers, collaborating, creating, and practicing skills as needed. The central challenge for educators is learning how to harness these tools to create authentic, engaging, and transformative learning experiences.
A New Digital Reality
Today’s digital environment is constant and fast-paced. A widely cited snapshot of online activity shows the scale of that reality: every minute, people watch millions of videos, send hundreds of millions of emails, perform millions of search queries, log into social platforms, swipe through dating apps, post thousands of images, and download hundreds of thousands of apps. In the United States, estimates indicate that many children spend more than 80 hours each week interacting with one or more screens, compared with roughly 25 hours a week spent in formal school settings. Those figures help explain why digital engagement is central to young people’s social lives, identity formation, and sense of empowerment.
For the always-online generation, devices serve many roles: they are tools for connection, entertainment, discovery, and learning. Young people use their phones and laptops to chat with friends, follow trends, access information, play games, and participate in communities that matter to them. Digital technologies give students a platform where their voices can be heard and where they can be recognized on their own terms. That sense of agency is often a powerful draw and helps explain why many adults perceive their children as spending “too much” time online.
At the same time, it’s essential to teach balance. Digital engagement and offline experiences are both valuable. Young learners need guidance on managing their time, evaluating the quality of online information, and maintaining healthy social and emotional habits. Balance is a two-way street: just as older generations expect digital natives to participate in established cultural and civic practices, educators and parents must also make an effort to understand the online contexts and values that shape young people’s lives.
Digital culture is no longer a niche phenomenon; it’s the new normal across communities worldwide. This immersion influences everything from attention and problem-solving strategies to how learners collaborate and perceive themselves. Neuroscience and education researchers—such as Gary Small, John Medina, Larry Rosen, Judy Willis, and David Sousa—have described how repeated exposure to digital media can alter neural pathways in a process called neuroplasticity. In practical terms, chronic digital bombardment reshapes habits of attention, information seeking, and interaction.
These changes have produced distinct learning preferences among what some call the digital generations. Digital learners often favor interactive, immediate, and multimedia-rich experiences. They expect learning to be relevant, connected to community, and infused with opportunities to create and share. Recognizing these preferences does not mean abandoning rigor; rather, it calls for rethinking how learning activities can be designed to be both challenging and compatible with contemporary modes of engagement.
Educators and school leaders who want to stay effective must consider how to blend timeless principles of teaching—clear objectives, feedback, scaffolding, and assessment—with strategies that leverage technology’s strengths: collaboration, simulation, personalization, and rapid access to resources. Doing so can transform the devices and platforms that worry some adults into instruments for deeper learning, problem solving, and civic participation.
About this post
This article is part of The Brief History of the Future of Education series. Based on a new book by Ian Jukes and Ryan L. Schaaf, the series explores how schools can move beyond the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset, confront the challenges of disruptive innovation, understand the learning attributes of digital generations, and prepare learners with the next-generation skills they will need to thrive.
About the Author
Ryan Schaaf is Associate Professor of Educational Technology at Notre Dame of Maryland University and a faculty member in the Digital Age Learning and Educational Technology program at Johns Hopkins University. He works with educators to explore the potential of gaming, the characteristics of modern learning and learners, and emerging technologies and trends that can improve education.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media hub focused on the shift toward digital curriculum in education.