(LifeSiteNews) — Sweden’s educational system is distancing itself from digital learning and returning to books, paper and pens in an effort to remedy its poor literacy rates.
“We’re trying, actually, to get rid of screens as much as possible,” said Joar Forsell, an education spokesperson for the Liberal party, which is led by Sweden’s education minister.
“With higher ages in school, you might use them a little bit more, but with lower ages, or in school, I don’t think we should use screens at all,” he added.
The education official stressed that data shows kids who have been working with tech devices through their entire education are “lagging behind” in international achievement benchmarks.
It is clear that educational outcomes have suffered in the country for over a dozen years. Sweden’s Pisa ranking – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) benchmark for core educational subjects – markedly dropped in 2012 and then again in 2022. That year, almost a quarter (24%) of students ages 15 or 16 failed to demonstrate even a basic level of reading comprehension.
In 2019, Sweden’s then-Social Democrat government administration mandated computer tablet use in preschools.
Neuroscientist Dr. Sissela Nutley has highlighted the mounting evidence that digital devices impair reading comprehension. Nicholas Carr made a case in his book The Shallows that the internet tends to rewire our brains’ attention spans and depth of processing for the worse. One of the reasons for this, he says, is that when we read on the internet, we tend to skim, while books encourage deep and focused reading.
One recent study shows that children with high levels of screen engagement before age two showed brain development changes “linked to slower decision-making and increased anxiety by their teenage years.”
After a 2023 consultation involving academics, teaching organizations, and public groups, schools are no longer required to use digital devices, and tablets are no longer given to children under age two.
Later this year, a total ban on cell phones in schools will come into effect.
The neighboring country of Norway is a clear case study in the disastrous impacts of children’s technology use on literacy. Norway children’s reading comprehension scores tanked after 2016, when each five-year-old starting school was given an iPad.
Now, Norway ranks dead last out of the 65 countries measured for children’s enjoyment of reading by Pirls (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). Its Pisa reading performance, once relatively high, now lags below the OECD average, and well below the U.K.
About 500,000 Norwegians in a population of 5.6 million now cannot read basic text, The Times reported.
In 2016 Norway gave every 5-year-old child an iPad.
Within a few years, Norway’s reading scores plummeted and dropped below the OECD average.
They ranked dead last out of 65 countries.
Now Norway is spending millions of dollars to reverse this trend and get people reading. pic.twitter.com/qZ25fySXz0
— Alex & Books 📚 (@AlexAndBooks_) April 15, 2026
“We are far, far too rich, so we do stupid things with our money,” former education minister Trine Skei Grande said.
Skei Grande said that children are limited by what she calls a “kitchen language,” a vocabulary only big enough to refer to ordinary day-to-day things – an estimated 17,000 words – compared with a seasoned reader’s vocabulary of 55,000 to 70,000 words.
Now, Norway is trying to use creative ways to engage its children in reading once again and has even consulted teenagers to come up with ways they can attract young people to libraries. By holding events such as chess tournaments and roller-skating parties, the main public library system lent a record 2.2 million books across 23 branch libraries in Oslo. About half of these books were lent to children.
Norway has already banned iPads for the first three years of school, and cell phones are banned for all children.
Summer reading competitions have been held in libraries to encourage children to read by rewarding them with prizes when they achieve certain milestones such as hitting a certain page number.
“Last summer, a library in Haugesund completely ran out of children’s books because so many wanted to take part,” said Helene Voldner of the Norwegian Library Association.
Despite the evidence that tech use interferes with literacy development in children, the trade association Swedish Edtech Industry is arguing that an analog-focused education risks failing to prepare students for future jobs. Edtech CEO Jannie Jeppeson cited a recent EU report that predicts that 90 percent of jobs will require digital skills.
“Everybody needs digital basic skills in order to enter the workforce,” Jeppesen told the BBC, which emphasized her pro-tech spin on educational needs. She is concerned that tech companies such as music streamer Spotify and Legora, an AI platform for the legal profession, “will move elsewhere” if they can’t find adequate IT skills in Sweden.
Some critics are also calling for elementary school children to be taught about AI in Sweden, in addition to high schoolers, and are claiming that an analog approach to education will deepen inequality of outcomes in students.
However, Forsell is adamant that children “should not be taught about AI before they’ve mastered other basic skills,” the BBC noted.
“You can only give people the opportunities that inequality is taking away from them by giving them proper education,” he said.