The study also showed that increased usage of AI was associated with a tendency among students to give up attempting to solve problems they otherwise would be able to tackle.
>A team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and the education company McGraw Hill examined a decade of data from a popular online learning tool by McGraw Hill, starting in 2015. Across millions of math sessions by a group that ranged from fifth graders to college students, the researchers compared performance from before 2022, when ChatGPT first came out, with the work that followed its arrival.
>A.I. tools condition people to expect immediate responses and deny them the experience of working through challenges, the authors say, which is crucial for skill development and one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning.
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/09/29/magazine/ai-chatbots-brain-development-study.html]
Author: Ph.D in Moronology
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2026 – Does AI stop children from learning?
David Stromberg of Stockholm University and Victor Lei and Wu Yanhui of the University of Hong Kong set out to fill the gap. They tracked 27,000 pupils aged 12-18 in China, where AI adoption has been fast. Around 80% reported using models such as Doubao and DeepSeek; the other 20% formed the control group.
The drop in exam scores was concentrated among students who rushed their homework. Those who used AI but spent as long on assignments as non-users paid little penalty. What matters, then, is how pupils use the technology
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2024 – “Professors say students are coming into college with a host of new and alarming learning challenges, including fragmented and distracted thinking, along with sharper limits on what they are willing or able to do.”
Sophia Sarafova, an associate professor of biology at Davidson College, notes that at the start of her teaching career, 18 years ago, new students were able to synthesize and summarize information from multiple lectures on a topic to extract general principles they could apply in new situations.
“Not anymore,” she says.
“Note-taking now requires specific instruction on what to write down and how to organize it. Also, a lot of students are unable to rephrase a statement without changing the meaning, often in drastic ways that clearly contradict the core of the statement.”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-the-end-of-reading
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2026 – Citing middle-school level skills, UC faculty want to restore math, science testing for applicants
The letter cites a November report from UC San Diego’s Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions, which concluded that the number of students whose mathematical abilities were below the typical high school level had increased thirty-fold in the past five years.
“The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,” professors wrote in the letter. “Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome.”
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2025 – A link between problematic social media use and mental health in Greece: Sex and generation differences
Our findings revealed a positive correlation between problematic social media use and anxiety, which was unaffected by sex or generation. Additionally, a positive link was found between problematic social media use and depression, with a stronger association observed in Generation Z and Millennials.