Janine Krasicky Sadaj - J9 Media

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath just delivered the brutal truth parents and educators need to face: “Even in schools, it doesn’t matter what the size of the screen is… and it doesn’t matter who bought it… All of these things are going to hurt learning, which in turn are going to hurt our kids’ cognitive development.” His core warning: Gen Z is the first modern generation to be less cognitively capable than their parents — despite more years in school. Attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, even general IQ — all declining. The culprit isn’t school itself. It’s the widespread introduction of screens and digital tools for learning. Across 80 countries, once tech floods classrooms, performance drops sharply. Kids using computers ~5 hours/day for schoolwork score over 2/3 of a standard deviation lower than those who rarely touch tech. US NAEP data mirrors it: states adopt 1:1 devices → scores plateau, then fall. The biological reality: Humans evolved to learn deeply from other humans, not screens. Screens circumvent the natural mechanisms of attention, memory consolidation, and deep processing. When the tool fails to deliver, we don’t remove it — we redefine success to fit the tool (e.g., SAT reading comprehension reduced to skimming short sentences instead of deep passages). That’s not progress. That’s surrender. The cost is a generation losing cognitive sharpness at the exact moment the world needs them sharpest. Parents, teachers, policymakers: How much longer do we let screens dictate what “learning” looks like?

An incredible thing just happened.

In 1931 in Kiel, Germany, Rachel Posner, the wife of a rabbi, took this picture. On the back of the photograph she wrote: “‘Death to Judah,’ so the flag says. ‘Judah lives forever,’ so the light answers.” The light will continue to answer the darkness. Happy Hanukkah.

Leaving a trafficker is only step one. Without safe housing, trauma informed care, and real economic options, survivors often end up vulnerable again. Michigan has serious gaps in housing and prevention education. We are working on both sides: recovery and prevention.

50 million people are living in modern slavery worldwide. Around 28 million in forced labor and 22 million in forced marriage. Trafficking is present in every region, including high income countries. We are sharing what this means for Michigan and how survivors can rebuild.

Meet Mikayla Harris, Case Coordinator at Hope Against Trafficking. A rising social work professional and Wayne State MSW student, Mikayla helps survivors rebuild their lives with compassion and dignity. “Every survivor deserves to be seen, heard, and given the chance to heal.”💜