Technology has undermined teaching and destroyed students’ attention spans, writes Shane Trotter on Quillette.

His high school handed out Ipads and required teachers to find ways to use them.

We spent hours making content-based movie trailers on iMovie and then teaching students to do the same. We had students research topics and build Keynote presentations. We made interactive iPad-based test review games.

Teachers used Nearpod to sync slideshows to students iPads. Instead of looking up at a single screen, students looked down at their iPads, where they were a click away from social media and games.

“Prior to the iPad, students would have had nothing better to distract them than doodling on notebook paper or passing notes,” writes Trotter. “After the iPad, however, teachers had to compete with all the world’s entertainment and the attention-hacking efforts of Silicon Valley’s most brilliant minds.”

Frustrated by the daily deluge of students who had lost or did not charge their iPads, our district implemented a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy that allowed students to use their smartphones as stand-ins for their iPads. . . . within a short time, incessant smartphone use had become the norm.

Many teachers came to appreciate the way smartphone availability operated as a sort of class-wide sedative. Rather than talking and moving about the class, students who finished their assignments early would simply descend into quiet, solitary scrolling. Most teachers began to allow their students to put earphones in as they finished assignments, as well.

The temptations and distractions of technology have eroded attention spans and social skills, he writes. Teachers and students are constantly distracted.

To stem the “toxic tide of digital distraction, depression and addiction,” schools must think carefully about when technology will support learning and when it’s a costly disruption, writes Andy Hargreaves in Education Week.  “Digital technologies must be employed only where they add unique value, and not, willy-nilly, just because they are there.”