Sweden Digitalised Without Asking the Brain

Part 3 in the series The Brain, the Screen and the School

In the two previous parts — 1 and 2 — I wrote about how tech companies design for the oldest parts of the brain, and how phones in bed sabotage sleep.

But there is a story that needs to be told about how Sweden, with the very best of intentions, digitalised its schools without asking how the brain actually learns.

It is a story of politics, prestige, and a consequence analysis that was never carried out.

“Sweden shall be the best in the world”

In 2017, the government adopted a national digitalisation strategy for the school system .

Minister of Education Gustav Fridolin (Green Party) was clear: Sweden would lead the way. It would promote knowledge development and equal opportunity. Programming, computational thinking, information literacy and source criticism were to be integrated into all subjects, as early as possible and for everyone.

In 2018, new preschool curricula were introduced making the use of digital tools mandatory.

Good ambition. But as Sissela Nutley puts it: without any understanding of how the brain learns, and without a consequence analysis.

That same year, the World Health Organisation issued recommendations advising against screen time for the very youngest children.

Sweden moved in precisely the opposite direction from the WHO.

The researcher who tried to stop it

Nutley recounts that she was one of two people who went public and tried to put on the brakes.

She had herself conducted one of the most ambitious studies on young children’s computer use. Four-year-olds were randomly assigned to train on different computer games. The study was published in the scientific journal Developmental Science (Bergman Nutley et al., 2011).

The result? It didn’t work. Some effect on working memory, but nothing on impulse control or other key capacities.

No evidence that it was beneficial for all. If anything, the opposite.

But the political train had already left the station.

What happened next?

Lgr11 was revised into Lgr22, embedding digital use across all subjects.

A follow-up digitalisation strategy was drafted in the same spirit: more technology, because.

This time, the research community pushed back. Several research teams submitted consultation responses so critical that the strategy was withdrawn.

That was the right call. But it left a vacuum.

The old strategy had expired. The new one was scrapped. And since then, Sweden has had no current national digitalisation strategy for its schools.

The tide has turned

That said: the tide has turned.

Since 2022, Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm (Liberal Party) and the government have taken several steps in the right direction. The failed digitalisation strategy was halted. Physical books and handwriting have been foregrounded again. Lower primary school is to be essentially screen-free.

The national mobile phone ban in compulsory school comes into force on 1 July 2026, backed by 95 million kronor in implementation support. And new curricula are on their way that will define digital competence with greater precision.

This is good. And it took courage — it meant going against a strong political consensus that had held for more than a decade.

But I also want to be honest: we still lack a coherent national strategy grounded in learning rather than technology.

And it is in that vacuum that every municipality is now navigating on its own.

I see it in Örebro. And I hear it from colleagues across the country.

The numbers that should give us pause

Nutley cites PISA data that ought to make us stop and think.

In 2023, seven in ten Swedish fifteen-year-olds reported using a computer at school every day , compared with four in ten across OECD countries.

Half used digital tools for at least three hours a day. Two in ten used them in every lesson.

Four in ten pupils reported that digital tools distracted them in the classroom in almost every lesson .

In Japan, that figure was five per cent.

And the results? Sweden fell sharply in both mathematics and reading comprehension in PISA 2022 , dropping back to the same level as the nadir year of 2012.

The relationship between digital use and school results turned out to follow a curve: both too little and too much is negative. There is a sweet spot. Sweden was well beyond it.

Children from less-educated families were hit hardest. The one-to-one shift — where every pupil received their own computer — was particularly harmful for that group .

The digitalisation that was meant to increase equality instead widened the gaps.

What Nutley wants us to understand

This is not about being anti-technology. Nutley herself is a researcher who uses digital tools every day.

It is about understanding what happens in the brain when we learn.

Learning requires effort. It requires us to direct our attention, process information in working memory, and repeat until the knowledge has settled into long-term memory. That is slow, hard work. It is like building shelves in a warehouse, to use Nutley’s house model.

Digital tools tend to make it too easy. We click on answers, copy and paste, photograph our notes. We Google instead of think.

This is what researchers call the Google effect: we make less effort when we know the information is just a click away.

And now AI has taken this to an entirely different level.

That does not mean digital tools have no place in schools. But it does mean we need to be far more deliberate about when they help and when they hinder.

What should we do?

As a school politician in Örebro and as a former teacher and educational developer, I believe we need three things:

The Swedish National Agency for Education must deliver a new strategy grounded in learning, not technology. The previous strategy asked: “How do we digitalise schools?” The right question is: “How does the brain learn, and which tools best support that?”

We need to define digital competence properly. Nutley points out that the concept has been poorly defined in Swedish policy documents. Using a computer is not digital competence. Understanding how algorithms influence us, being able to evaluate information critically, knowing when to close the lid — that is digital competence.

We must protect the core mission. Sweden has 14 per cent of pupils who do not complete compulsory school, and 25 per cent who cannot read at a basic level. We absolutely need AI literacy. But we also need literacy.

Digital tools can be used well. But we must safeguard the learning processes that matter.

That was not my conclusion. It came from the students themselves, in Nutley’s surveys.

In the next instalment, I look at the mental plate model and what schools can do to strengthen the protective factors that young people are currently lacking.