There's a movie called At First Sight based on or inspired by real world events. A blind man who lost his sight in early childhood gets his eyesight surgically restored as an adult and it doesn't go like people imagined.
At one point, he walks into a glass wall and breaks it because he's never learned how to see. Physically functional eyes aren't sufficient. There's more to it than that.
Sight involves two functional eyes and substantial training of the brain over years to figure out how to interpret the imagery being fed to the brain. We have stereoscopic vision where we have two eyes next to each other on the front of our face and that's a predator arrangement.
We triangulate what we see. One eye sees it from this angle, one eye sees it from that angle and it tells us important information about how far away it is but limits our field of vision.
And that triangulation happens in the brain, not the eyes. So there's a substantial mental piece to seeing and most people don't realize how large a part of seeing is learned behavior and happens inside our brain, not our eyes.
Herbivores often have one eye on each side of their head. They can see a much larger part of the 360 degrees around them but it's less precise because they don't chase prey. They run from threats.
They don't need precision. They need warning that something is coming up behind them.
So eyesight is highly complex and much studied and if you are blind in one eye that causes serious problems because your stereoscopic vision is gone. It impairs depth perception.
Some guy I didn't much like, published author who aggravated people, once said on a parenting list something about taking kids to the woods and how important that was. It's the only thing he ever said that made me think he wasn't an idiot but he failed to adequately explain himself.
I think he was trying to say it's harmful to development if kids spend most of their time indoors and never get to take in wide open spaces with their eyes. You live in a little box of a home and go to a little box of a classroom and then we wonder when everyone needs glasses.
There are studies that prove you think different in a tiny little room versus wide open spaces. The kind of detail-oriented thinking an accountant does is enhanced by the crowded little room they get associated with. And the big-picture thinking required of kings is enhanced by being in a castle on the hill with a wide expansive view of the entire valley over which he rules.
So it's developmentally more significant than just "You'll ruin your eyesight if you never go spend time in the great wide open." It impacts how you see the world and how you think and we don't really study that.
I've participated in discussions online about technology and someone speculated that in the future we will just have like video or AI training for everything and I suggested that this may not work because seeing involves substantial training of the mind to interpret what our eyes see. There's no reason to think that if adults, who already have that piece, find it adequately realistic that babies and toddlers will find it developmentally useful for teaching them how to see.
But I have never once in my entire life heard anyone ever wonder for one nanosecond how screen time impacts eyesight development or whether it makes you less of a big-picture thinker.
No, all I ever hear is Kermit the frog running across the stage of life flailing his arms and screaming in a panic.
Here's a guy saying "Our kids are getting dumber and screen time is the villain." And he ends with a reasonable concern that we are changing tests to curve the grade and tell ourselves the kids are fine.
I don't know enough about what else is going on. My kids are in their thirties. I have no clue what else is going on and I'm not in a position to rebut anything he has said.
But basically he's telling you he's got spiffy credentials and an impressive title, so take his word for it. He hasn't actually made his case.
When I had the obnoxious habit of taking apart PhDs on the internet, my big beef was "I don't want to hear that you have a PhD, so I should defer to your opinion. Show me your stuff. You're so educated? Give it to me. Take down my argument."
A lot of people with PhDs cannot explain themselves or argue their way out of a wet paper bag, especially not in layman's terms. So their primary skill is dazzling people with bullshit and counting on you not having the vocabulary to effectively rebut it and if you can, they will double down on "I have a PhD and you're just a homemaker!!!!"
I have talked before on this site about the many, many problems with testing and I generally share his concern about tests on any day of the week. But the problem is that changing the test isn't necessarily straight up bullshit.
People who read and write online interact with the process differently than those doing it long hand with pen and paper. That's well known.
It's not necessarily all down side.
We don't test people on being able to use a quill and inkwell anymore. It's not relevant. No one does that anymore. That's like historic reenactment, not "My desk job requires this skill."
My sons both had a label of dysgraphia in their school IEP and I told them "Don't sweat it. Learn enough to sign your name and please realize no matter how bad it is, if it's consistent, it's legally binding on a contract. THIS is your dad's completely illegible signature. Learn to type at least 35 wpm and don't worry about your terrible handwriting. It's not important. It's not likely to matter in your lives."
So I share his concerns that changing the test may be cheating and doing a disservice to our children. But he hasn't made his case proving this change is bad news.
Here's a gal blaming social problems and teenaged depression on the proliferation of the smart phone.
Family not bothering to spend time with kids is NOT CAUSED by tech and smart phones. My kids are technophiles. It doesn't do this to them. We still eat together and talk during meals.
MAYBE depression in kids correlates to parental neglect and excess time spent on social media is partly a proxy for that root cause. Owning a phone doesn't FORCE you to not have a relationship to your parents.
I share her concerns stated at the end about 12 year olds having their first romantic relationship with a chat bot or AI companion. But twelve year olds having sex with anyone is typically viewed as a problem.
I'm not saying there's nothing to be concerned about. I generally avoid talking about this because smart phones didn't exist or weren't widespread when my kids were five, so I don't really want to pretend I know what parents today are grappling with.
But I have yet to hear any criticisms of tech and children that didn't make me go "Sounds kind of like a parenting issue to me, not a tech problem." or similar reaction that boils down to feeling like this doesn't pass the sniff test and tech is being used as a scapegoat because it can't lie and get pissed off at you when you accuse it of behaving badly.