To older generations and teachers, phones are the greatest evil — hypnotizing younger generations and turning them into mindless zombies. A notification is enough to snap teens into a trance, locking them into their phones for hours and inhibiting them from focusing on things that “actually matter,” like assignments, studying or anything intellectually stimulating.

Is it true that younger generations are “addicted to their phones?” And if so, are phones actually “making kids dumber?” There is a relationship between poor learning outcomes and students’ dependency on their phones, attributing phones to negatively impacting students’ behavior. Hence, older generations settle that the phone is the culprit — “it’s that damn phone,” isn’t it?

A quick glance at the data seems to back up these common assertions. A 2023 Gallup report shows that “51% of U.S. teenagers spend at least four hours daily on social media.” Coincidentally, in 2023, The Atlantic reported that scores on the Program for International Student Assessment — the world’s most famous measure of student ability — have been perpetually declining.

Furthermore, earlier this month, results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that 12th graders’ reading skills hit a new low, with a third of those tested not having basic reading skills. Moreover, according to research from the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, compulsive social media use can negatively impact academic pursuits. In fact, one in five teens say social media hurts their grades and four in 10 say it hurts their productivity.

So, while it’s safe to say that students would rather doomscroll on social media apps than engage with the schoolwork forced upon them, resolving to attack phones and social media use through classroom phone bans and screen time controls in hopes that it will correct student behavior is a lazy and ineffective approach. Attacking phones allows the U.S. education system to deflect from its own failure by giving a temporary solution to the perpetual problem — passive learning.

Passive learning is “a method of learning or instruction where students receive information from the instructor and internalize it.” Students are expected to take in everything teachers say and regurgitate it back to them for a grade. This impedes student learning because it doesn’t allow for reflection, thus students merely gain the “illusion of competence” rather than genuine understanding. They are presented with skills without the proper tools for meaningful application.

It is important to address these so-called “faults” of social media harming Gen Z’s education through the lens of passive learning, one notable example being brain rot. Brain rot content is a reference to videos that have a low educational value, content that doesn’t do anything to benefit the minds that passively consume it and instead may deteriorate users’ intellect. Essentially, it is “content with no deeper purpose.”

Teens’ increased consumption of brain rot content and declining attention spans give reason for many people to believe that “phones are making kids dumb.” In reality, brain rot is a product of students not being taught to engage critically with media.

Furthermore, the spread of misinformation that permeates social media is one of the many consequences of passive learning. Combining students’ learned behavior — listen, take in, put back out — and the mechanisms social media offers — an influx of information and sharing tools — the prevalence of misinformation on social media and its influence among teens is unsurprising. Young people’s struggle to detect the false information they internalize is a clear parallel to the modes of instruction found in institutional education.

So yes, it’s easy to see why students choose passive scrolling over active learning; it’s what they were taught to do. And no, phones are not the culprit. Social media merely reveals students’ internalization of passive learning successfully cultivated by schools.

In all honesty, Gen Z deserves more praise for curating and popularizing “brain rot” content on social media. We effectively conceptualized all that school had to offer us!

While the driving forces that underlie students’ interaction with social media have been uncovered, it still begs the question: what is it about social media that captivates teens’ attention to begin with and why don’t teens spend their time mindlessly reading a textbook opposed to mindlessly scrolling online?

Things like “task-switching” between social media and homework are linked to lower grades and many argue that the powerful hold phones have on younger generations’ attention promotes distractibility. Albeit, if students are spending all their time on social media, which a third of teens almost constantly are, then they are equally capable of spending adequate time on educational activities and the attack on phones may be a logical one. However, drawing upon lower grades to scrutinize phone usage is a cheap shot since grades are an indicator of performance, not intelligence.

Once again, the problem comes back to passive learning. People’s attention is captivated when they are engaged and challenged, something passive learning fails to do.

Social media apps do what institutional education can’t. Reflecting on my own media usage for academic procrastination, I’ve come to the conclusion that social media engages me where school hasn’t been able to in the past. My “For You” page reflects my own interests, so I actually care about the content I am interacting with. Moreover, social media allows me to engage with topics directly related to the real world, like current events. Social media also fosters connection, as opposed to passive learning, which fosters isolation due to its one-way form.

Throughout middle and high school, I was one of the many students who put minimal effort into my classes, a symptom of knowing that what I was tasked to produce was meaningless. Thus, I used tools like Quizlet and Sparknotes to succeed in grade school without the burden of actually applying myself and seeking to learn anything, and the rise of generative AI for younger generations has only worsened this.

In my own experience, higher education solves some of the problems with attention and engagement. I get to choose my own courses and interact with the material I want to learn assignments I want to do. I was prompted to write this column after thinking about the works of ancient philosophers whose motivation to learn about the world was a curiosity for it — an innate curiosity that schools steal from students.

When there is an exciting and active world outside of schools, it really isn’t much of a competition. Attacking students’ failures in the education system is useless when the system’s own conditions are what influence the perpetual outcome.

It is essential that schools take a page out of social media’s book and take an active role in students’ lives, fostering an innate desire to learn by cultivating interest and curiosity within the educational system, rather than operating on a foundation of passivity.

Natalie Pappalardo is a junior majoring in English.

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.