More technology doesn’t always mean better classroom learning

Sweden’s retreat from screens prompts questions about the value of digital learning.

Responding to research on the harms of heavy tech, Sweden is putting down touchscreens and picking up the pencil in classrooms. The about-turn from a digitally innovative European country raises an urgent question for South Africa about our relationship with technology in education, and how to ensure that digital solutions complement learning.

After years as one of the earliest and most committed adopters of one-to-one digital learning, Sweden has begun the move back towards paper textbooks, handwriting and more restricted device use. Informed by data, the Swedish National Agency for Education’s proposed digitalisation strategy ran into sustained concern from researchers, neuroscientists and paediatricians during consultation.

The government’s own account of the shift, published in February 2024, describes a return to paper textbooks, restricted digital access for younger grades and cellphones banned from the start of the school day. The evidence behind the pivot concluded that heavy technology use had not improved outcomes, and it had disadvantaged already-­struggling learners the most.

It is an uncomfortable development for those who have spent the past decade telling the rest of the world that the future of education is digital.

Screen-based teaching appeared to weaken concentration, reduce reading comprehension and affect basic writing skills in younger children. Handwriting, unlike typing, engages motor, visual, memory and language systems simultaneously. Reading on digital devices made it harder for children to process information, with a growing body of evidence suggesting that reading and learning from paper encourages deeper comprehension and better retention, whereas screen reading produces more reading disruptions than paper-based reading. Excessive screen use raised broader concerns about learners’ brain development.

Sweden’s sudden change of tactic and the research raises an important question for South Africa. What should our relationship with technology in education actually be?

The answer is not to turn our backs on technology. Nor should we assume that putting a device in every child’s hands will somehow solve the problems of our education system.

South Africa participated in the last three Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2015, 2019 and 2023. In all three years, SA scored below the entry level for basic mathematical understanding, with a continued downward trend over the years.

TIMSS is set to evaluate Grade 4 learners. However, the South African learners were in Grade 5 to match curricula and maintain trend measurement. Despite this, SA learners still fared poorly.

This plays out with increasing numbers of learners opting for mathematics literacy. Grade 12 learners who wrote mathematics literacy increased by 55,325 between 2023 and 2025, whereas learners who wrote mathematics dropped by 7,601 over the same period. This is while more than 450 schools don’t offer mathematics at all. This is not an issue that technology will fix.

The lesson from Sweden is not that technology has failed.