There's a growing body of evidence — from Jonathan Haidt's work to the American Academy of Pediatrics' own guidelines — that excessive screen time is reshaping how children think. Not just what they think about, but the architecture of their attention itself.
Shorter attention spans. Less tolerance for boredom. Decreased ability to follow a sustained argument.
Classical education is, in many ways, the opposite of a screen. It asks students to sit with a single text. To listen to a passage read once and narrate it back. To follow a logical argument from premise to conclusion. To read books written by people who assumed their readers had long attention spans — because they did.
This isn't nostalgia. It's formation.
A child trained on the trivium — grammar, logic, rhetoric — develops cognitive habits that screens actively undermine: patience, sequential thinking, the ability to hold complexity in mind without reaching for a shortcut.
We're not Luddites at Saints Classical. Technology has its place. But we believe the foundation has to be built with books, conversation, and the slow work of thinking well. The screens aren't going anywhere. The question is whether your child will have the mental habits to use them — rather than be used by them.
That's what classical education is building.