Starting question
If digital immediacy is going to persist and we cannot always count on the family environment, then to address immaturity in a school… what is needed?
The scientific evidence behind the diagnosis
1
Cognitive neuroscience
Screens and executive control
Prolonged use of digital media weakens the central cognitive-control network: the one that allows sustaining attention, postponing reward and regulating impulses.
Lissak (2018) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2021) · Mischel, Stanford (1970)
2
Social psychology
The anxious generation
The shift towards a smartphone-based childhood coincides with rising anxiety, depression and attentional decline. It is not a sick generation: it is a generation with no practice.
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation (2024) · NYU Stern
3
Parenting styles
Overprotection and fragility
Overprotective parenting directly predicts higher levels of anxiety and low tolerance of failure. It produces exactly what it seeks to avoid: fragile, dependent adults.
Lythcott-Haims (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology (2022) · 38 studies
4
The psychology of meaning
Existential void and amotivation
Only 20% of adolescents have a clear purpose. 60% are in active disengagement. The absence of purpose directly affects the capacity to sustain effort.
William Damon, The Path to Purpose (2008) · Stanford · 1,200 interviews
The four factors the school cannot control but can address
⚡
Digital immediacy
Erosion of attention, fragmented thinking, low tolerance of waiting.
Structural to the digital ecosystem
🛡
Family overprotection
Effort is read as a sign of error. Dependence on the adult to solve problems.
The family's private sphere
🌊
Insufficient emotional regulation
Low tolerance of failure. Risk avoidance. Difficulty working with real conflict.
Formed in the early years
🔍
Void of meaning
Amotivation. Affective disconnection from learning. Effort with no inner direction.
Absence of any experience of purpose
What the school must take on as its own responsibility
3.1
Deliberate cognitive training
Tasks with delayed reward, projects spanning weeks, slow and analytical reading. Not as pedagogical nostalgia, but as a deliberate counterweight to the digital ecosystem.
3.2
A culture of difficulty as a value
A common teacher language about productive error. Assessment that recognises the process and revision, not just the result.
3.3
An emotional reference environment
A safe but not protected environment. The school does not eliminate difficulty: it grades it and accompanies it. Teamwork with real conflict.
3.4
Real, not simulated, agency
Structures where the student chooses, executes and is genuinely accountable. Real agency is the most effective antidote to amotivation.
3.5
Structural teacher coherence
Explicit agreements on language, criteria and responses to effort avoidance. Not uniformity, but a shared culture.
+
Explicit work on meaning
Questions of purpose, projects linked to the student's identity, spaces for reflection on one's own learning. The dimension that most distinguishes a school.
Real agency versus simulated agency
Simulated agency — to avoid
Choosing between options pre-set by the teacher
Presenting a product with no real audience
Error with no consequence, always recoverable with no process
A process closed step by step by the teacher
Real agency — the aim
Defining one's own research question
Presenting to an external audience: families, experts, community
Error with real consequence within a safe framework
An open process with student decisions at each phase
Assessment as the main lever — the backwash effect
| If assessment requires… |
The student practises… |
And develops… |
| A process documented in phases |
Planning and self-regulation |
Executive maturity |
| Agency in the project's decisions |
Real responsibility |
Cognitive autonomy |
| Explicit metacognitive reflection |
Awareness of one's own learning |
Emotional regulation |
| Tolerance of error as part of the process |
Resilience in the face of failure |
Resistance to frustration |
| Connection with the student's real questions |
The experience of genuine purpose |
Intrinsic motivation |
Summary — the six simultaneous conditions the school needs
1
Deliberate cognitive training
Tasks with delay, open problems, analytical reading.
2
A culture of difficulty
Shared language, assessment of the process, a narrative of productive error.
3
An emotional reference environment
Graded real-conflict situations, safe but not protected.
4
Real student agency
Decisions with consequences, authentic projects, real audiences.
5
Structural teacher coherence
Explicit team agreements. A shared culture, not uniformity.
6
Explicit work on meaning
Questions of purpose, projects linked to the student's identity.
The school cannot change digital immediacy or family overprotection. It can, however, be the one space where the student systematically experiences the opposite.
Metacognition
Inner life
Resilience
Agency