Don’t Let Easy Information Build Weaker Minds
My kids have access to information in a way I couldn’t have imagined when I was their age. If they want to know how a volcano forms, hear an expert explain economics, watch someone repair an engine, or find the background of a historical event, the answer is usually a few taps away. Dr. Kathy joked on the podcast about the days of walking to the library, checking out the right book, and then realizing after returning it that you had forgotten to write down the page number you needed for the citation. That inefficiency could be maddening, but something formative came from having to look, remember, search again, compare sources, and stay with the problem long enough to find the answer. Technology has solved many of those inconveniences, and I am thankful for that, but it raises a harder question: when we remove all the friction from learning, are we also removing some of the experiences that helped build strong minds?
That question came into sharper focus in our recent Celebrate Kids Podcast conversation after I read a discussion about international cognitive testing and whether the long rise in IQ scores often described as the Flynn effect may be slowing or reversing in some developed countries. The episode pointed to several possible explanations, changes in reading habits, screen use, attention, memorization, passive information consumption, and the broader environments children now grow up in, but Dr. Kathy also wisely cautioned that she had not examined the specific IQ instruments being referenced and that older tests may measure skills today's children simply practice differently. That caution matters because I do not want to take a complicated set of studies and turn it into a dramatic declaration that today's kids are somehow less intelligent. A more useful parenting question is whether the environment we are building strengthens the habits that make sustained thinking possible.
Screens May Matter Most Because of What They Replace
When I asked Dr. Kathy what single factor concerned her most, her answer surprised me because she did not begin with an app or even a device. She said we are not reading to children enough. Her point was not that screens are harmless; it was that their greatest cost may sometimes be displacement. Time that once went toward books, board games, biking, neighborhood play, family service, conversations, and ordinary experiences can now disappear into individualized digital consumption.
That distinction is important because it gives parents something more useful than fear. If I simply tell myself that screens are ruining my child's brain, I may feel helpless or guilty. But if I ask, “What has the screen replaced today?” I can make a concrete decision. Did it replace sleep, reading, conversation, outdoor movement, boredom, practice, chores, or time with someone who loves them?
Those ordinary things can look less impressive than the technology competing with them, but they are doing more than filling time. A board game teaches children to wait, predict, lose, recover, and notice cause and effect. Outdoor play puts them in a world that does not instantly respond to their preferences. Reading requires sustained attention and asks the mind to create images rather than receive them preassembled. Conversation forces children to listen long enough for another person to finish their thought.
Reading Aloud Does More Than Teach Reading
Dr. Kathy spent particular time on reading aloud because children can understand language above the level they can independently read. When parents read books that stretch them, kids develop what she described as a listening vocabulary: words they may not yet spell or formally define but can begin to understand and use because they have encountered them in meaningful context. That means bedtime reading does much more than create a sweet family ritual. It is exposing children to syntax, vocabulary, ideas, imagination, attention, and relationships between concepts they may not encounter through everyday speech.
And it has something the device usually does not: a person beside them. Dad changes his voice for a character. The child interrupts to ask why someone acted that way. You turn the page and wonder together what comes next. Learning and relationship become attached, and that attachment matters more than we sometimes realize.
Relationship Helps Learning Stick
Dr. Kathy made this same point when talking about young children learning basic skills. A child can learn letters or numbers from a screen, but learning with a parent or teacher adds celebration, eye contact, correction, affection, and the experience of doing something that matters to another human being. When a four year old finally stops confusing a B and a D and Dad lights up, the child has not simply processed information. He has experienced competence in relationship.
That matters as kids get older too. A teenager is more likely to stay with a difficult subject when someone knows them well enough to challenge the excuse and celebrate the breakthrough. Technology can deliver information efficiently, but formation is much harder to automate because it depends on being known. This may also help explain why simply buying more educational technology does not automatically produce deeper learners. The tool can provide practice, explanation, or access, but it cannot fully replace the significance of a trusted adult saying, “I know this is hard, and I also know you can keep going.”
Strong Minds Need Some Friction
I keep coming back to the idea of intellectual friction because there are skills we only develop when something resists us a little. We remember more when we have to retrieve something instead of always looking it up. We develop reasoning when an answer is not obvious, and we have to compare possibilities, test assumptions, and reconsider what we initially believed. That does not mean hardship itself is automatically educational. Pointless frustration is still pointless. But unnecessary difficulty and productive resistance are different. Children need experiences where the answer does not arrive immediately and where adults do not rush in so quickly that the child never has to wrestle.
This is one reason I am cautious when every educational improvement is measured primarily by how efficient or comfortable it makes learning. Efficiency is useful, but efficiency is not always the goal. Sometimes the struggle is building the capacity we are trying to preserve.
Don’t Only Let Kids Do What Comes Naturally
This also connects with the 8 Great Smarts. Understanding how a child is smart helps us give them meaningful entry points into learning, but it should never excuse us from teaching outside their strengths. A Word Smart child may genuinely love writing more than mathematics. A Body Smart kid may come alive through movement and struggle with long periods at a desk. Those differences matter, and good teaching honors them.
But honoring a child's strengths is different from allowing strengths to become hiding places. If the Word Smart student says, “I'm just not a math person,” and we let that identity excuse every difficult math task, we may accidentally weaken the resilience that child needs. The smarts should help us awaken capacity, not narrow possibility. Sometimes the most formative assignment is the one a child would not naturally choose because it teaches patience, humility, strategy, and the discovery that difficulty does not mean inability.
Memory Still Matters in an Age of Search
Dr. Kathy also raised an interesting point about the way older IQ tests often included memorization. Children today do not need to memorize as many phone numbers, facts, directions, or reference information because devices carry those things for us. That does not necessarily mean the children are cognitively weaker; the environment has changed. But it still raises an important question: if we outsource every memory task because information is always retrievable, what happens to the mental habits that retrieval once exercised?
I do not think the answer is to make children memorize random facts simply to prove they can. But a well stocked memory gives the mind something to connect new ideas to. Scripture hidden in the heart can be recalled in a moment of anxiety. Multiplication facts free mental space for more difficult mathematics. Historical knowledge lets a student recognize patterns without searching every reference before understanding the conversation. Search is enormously useful. But a mind with nothing readily available has less material to think with.
Motivation Begins With Believing I Matter
When I asked Dr. Kathy what parents can build at home, she moved away from intelligence testing entirely and talked about motivation. Research she referenced points toward children learning well when they value themselves, value learning, and value the future. I love that framework because it explains why learning is never simply cognitive.
If a child believes, “I do not matter,” then working hard can begin to feel pointless. If learning is only about grades, then once the grade disappears there may be little reason to keep being curious. If the future looks frightening, chaotic, or hopeless, then preparation for that future can feel irrelevant. Christian parents have something powerful to speak into all three. You matter because you bear God's image. Learning matters because God's world is worth understanding. The future matters because God has not abandoned it.
Ask About Learning, Not Just Performance
This gives parents practical ways to change the culture at home without turning dinner into another classroom. Instead of asking only, “What grade did you get?” ask, “What did you learn this week that you think I don't know?” Ask what surprised them or what idea they want to tell Grandpa about this weekend. Invite them to teach you something.
That communicates something subtle but important: knowledge is useful because it can be shared. Learning is not simply a private competition for a transcript. The child begins to see himself as someone capable of receiving truth and giving it to someone else. It also puts the parent in the posture of learner sometimes, which is healthy for everyone. Kids should see adults remain curious rather than acting as though education ended with graduation.
Give Them a Future Worth Preparing For
The third part of Dr. Kathy's motivation framework may be the easiest to overlook. Children need to value the future. That can be difficult when they have nearly unlimited access to wars, disasters, shootings, political conflict, family breakdown, economic fear, and human tragedy before they have the developmental ability to process the weight of all of it. A child who quietly concludes that tomorrow is mostly bad news has less incentive to prepare faithfully for tomorrow.
Parents do not have to hide children from reality, but we should put reality inside a larger story. There are problems worth solving. People still build beautiful things. Families still flourish. Churches still serve. Scientists discover, artists create, farmers plant, teachers teach, and neighbors show up for each other. God is still at work. Our kids have a future worth preparing for because their gifts can become part of His work in the world.
Hosea Gives Us a Sobering Picture of What Happens When Knowledge Is Rejected
Hosea 4:6 contains the line, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” In context, this is not primarily a verse about standardized testing or intellectual ability. It indicts God's people for rejecting knowledge of Him and ignoring His instruction. That distinction matters, because I do not want to force a modern technology debate into a passage that is speaking first about covenant unfaithfulness.
But the image is still sobering for Christian parents. A kind of diminishing happens when people repeatedly refuse what forms them toward truth. Knowledge in Scripture is never merely a collection of facts. It is connected with knowing God, receiving His instruction, and ordering life according to what is true. That gives us a better question than whether our children can score higher on a cognitive test. Are they becoming people who love truth enough to seek it?
The Quiet Dimming Is What Concerns Me Most
The danger may not look dramatic. A child does not wake up one morning suddenly incapable of deep thought. The change is quieter than that. One more evening scrolling instead of reading. One more difficult task avoided because something easier is available. Over thousands of hours, those tiny choices form habits. But the hopeful side of formation is that the reverse is also true. One chapter read aloud. One board game at the table. One phone left in another room. One hard question we do not answer for them. One walk where nobody is entertained. One conversation where a parent says, “Tell me more. Why do you think that?” Those hours accumulate too.
We Can Change the Environment in Our Own Home
Dr. Kathy was emphatic that parents should not become hopeless about broad cultural trends because we still have significant influence over the atmosphere of our own homes. We may not be able to change how every child uses technology, but we can decide what happens after dinner in our house. We can decide whether books are easy to reach, whether screens fill every quiet space, whether our kids see us reading, whether questions are welcomed, and whether learning is celebrated.
That is good news because it means the response does not require us to become neuroscientists or education researchers. Read aloud. Play something. Go outside. Give kids real responsibilities. Ask questions. Let them struggle appropriately. Talk with them. Teach them something. Ask them to teach you. And sometimes leave the answer unfound long enough for curiosity to do its work. The goal is not to raise children who can recite more facts than everyone around them. It is to raise children with minds alive enough to seek truth, relationships strong enough to keep learning, and enough intellectual resilience to stay with a difficult question when an easy answer would be faster.
Engaging Strong Minds Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Read aloud beyond their independent reading level, discuss unfamiliar words, tell stories, and give kids opportunities to explain ideas in their own language.
Logic Smart: Play strategy games, ask cause-and-effect questions, let them solve real problems, and resist answering before they have had time to think.
Picture Smart: Let them imagine scenes from books before watching the movie, draw concepts, map ideas, and create visual representations rather than always receiving finished images.
Music Smart: Learn songs, rhythms, instruments, and lyrics that require memory and repeated practice, then discuss what the music communicates.
Body Smart: Protect time for physical challenge, outdoor play, building, cooking, repairing, sports, and skills that require repeated embodied practice.
Nature Smart: Get outside and observe something slowly. Identify, classify, compare, notice changes, and let creation cultivate attention that is not controlled by an algorithm.
People Smart: Play games, serve together, visit relatives, discuss books, and create enough shared experiences that children learn through relationships rather than individualized feeds.
Self Smart: Give kids quiet without immediately filling it. Encourage journaling, reflection, prayer, and time to stay with a thought long enough to discover what they actually think.
Remember: However your child is smart, remember this: strong minds are not built simply by having access to more information. They are built through attention, relationship, curiosity, memory, challenge, practice, and thousands of ordinary hours spent learning to love what is true.