Banning is not enough: The crusade for critical thinking in the era of digital monopolies
The most recent case is here in Finland -the land of Nokia- where, even though virtually all 7-year-old children have a mobile phone, its use has been banned in primary, secondary, and high school this academic year.
The hidden power of big tech companies
In recent decades, major American and Chinese technology companies have consolidated an unprecedented level of power. This is not only about innovation or useful services, but about a global project that, as Salim Ismail —co-founder of Singularity University and author of Exponential Organizations— points out, rests on a profoundly monopolistic vision. At their core, these corporations believe that democracy and freedom cannot coexist, and they have designed their strategies to impose a model of global control.
Their most powerful weapon is social media. All major tech companies own one, and this is no coincidence. First, because these platforms have become universal, capable of reaching every corner of the planet. Second, because they have been deliberately designed to polarize conversations, stimulate hatred, and push people toward extremes.
Polarization destroys the space for dialogue and, with it, social trust and critical thinking. In contexts of extremism, no one truly converses: everyone simply defends their own position. This is the ideal scenario for monopolies, because it keeps people hooked and fragmented, translating into economic power while simultaneously eroding the very essence of democracy: reasoned exchange in pursuit of the common good.
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Politics, Monopolies and Education
When we understand this background, political phenomena such as Donald Trump's movements or his policies favorable to big tech companies stop seeming accidental. Behind them is a logic that turns certain leaders into mere executors of corporate interests towards a kind of global technological feudalism.
This scenario has direct consequences on education. In recent years, a frontal war has been launched against mobile devices in primary and secondary schools. They are blamed for the decline in academic results, for discipline problems in the classroom, and for harm to cognitive development at early ages, supported by research such as that of Jean Twenge (iGen, 2017) on the effects of hyperconnectivity in teenagers.
The most recent case is here in Finland -the land of Nokia- where, despite the fact that practically all 7-year-old children have a mobile, their use has been prohibited in elementary, middle, and high school this academic year.
Beyond the Ban: what's really at stake
But reducing the problem to a simple prohibition falls short. What social networks are undermining is not just attention in class: it is the ability to think. This deficit might also explain the low results in standardized tests like PISA, whose items require analysis, critical thinking, and cognitive flexibility to solve them; this very lack of ability to think effectively could also explain other problems that have recently arisen, such as difficulty in class governance, cases of school bullying, and other coexistence problems.
The banning of devices should be accompanied by a major crusade in favor of critical thinking in classrooms. The goal is to cultivate cognitive and emotional skills that will allow new generations to resist the logic of polarization. This implies:
- Classes based on questions and problems. Learning should generate cognitive conflict, debate, and hypothesis testing.
- Spaces for deep reading. As Maryanne Wolf notes in Reader, Come Home (2018), reading fosters concentration, reflection, and creativity —qualities that counteract the immediacy and superficiality of social networks.
- Active pedagogical practices. Strategies such as problem-based learning, project-based learning, or phenomenon-based learning all require critical thinking as a prerequisite.
In conclusion, we need classrooms envisioned as "gyms for thought" where the focus is not on memorizing information, but exercising the mind in analysis, creativity and collaboration.
Teacher training as the key to change
We cannot forget that this crusade depends on teachers. From the Escalae Institute and our work with TeachersPRO, we are convinced that prohibitive decrees are not enough: systematic training is needed to equip the teaching community with tools to teach how to think.
A concrete example is the pilot we've initiated in Uzbekistan with support from UNICEF. After an exhaustive analysis of their national curriculum, it was concluded that the first Lifelong Learning Challenge for teachers to work with TeachersPRO should focus precisely on Critical Thinking. Together with the Ministry of Education, this competence was considered as the basis for developing any other active methodology or formative assessment strategy. And in this month of October, we are already beginning their training.
If teachers master strategies to foster critical thinking, they will then be able to successfully implement innovations such as project-based learning, phenomenon-based teaching, or formative assessment, among others. Without this foundation, banning mobile devices in school will simply be a temporary fix.
Conclusion: educate for life, not just for school
The temptation to prohibit is great, because it's fast and visible. But educating is much more complex: it requires cultivating cognitive and emotional skills that allow students to coexist in a world saturated with information, polarization, and digital monopolies.
Our responsibility is not only to prepare young people to pass exams or meet school standards. It is to give them the ability to think, communicate, and create freely so that they can confront and transform the world in which they will live. Because if we don't, others - the technological monopolies - will think for them.