10 percent per hour: How Canadian students are losing grades to screen time

Taking a look back on our childhood, when we first learned to read and write, our memories are flooded with pencils, colours, and books. Quite obvious. Alas, not for the present generation of Canada. For them, it is screens. It is shocking how screens have substituted the first tutors and become the initial arbiters of knowledge. Before children can form complete sentences or grasp basic arithmetic, many are swiping and scrolling with an instinctive dexterity that belies their age. Digital fluency, once painstakingly nurtured, now emerges almost organically. Yet, beneath this veneer of competence lies a troubling paradox: The very tools designed to educate may be quietly undermining the cognitive skills they are meant to foster. Each hour absorbed by screens appears to come at a steep, o