As the new school year gets underway, the debate over digital versus analog learning shows no sign of cooling, and a growing number of school districts are reconsidering the role of devices in the classroom.

The shift comes as math and reading test scores tanked after schools traded textbooks for screens. Yet according to education experts, the impact of computers and tablets on learning extends well beyond the traditional "three R's."

"Elementary school always taught more than reading and mathematics. Children learned how to wait for someone else's idea to be expressed before sharing their own, to negotiate disagreements and explain their thinking," University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education professor Sarah Schneider Kavanagh and University of Portland School of Education professor Katie A. Danielson wrote in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month.

Those lessons, they added, are a critical part of growing up: research has shown that children's cognition matures through person-to-person interactions, not merely through receiving information.

Classroom computers and adaptive software now deliver individualized instruction to many students. While that offers real benefits, Kavanagh and Danielson warned of significant trade-offs. When students simply click through math lessons on their own rather than solving problems alongside classmates, they miss out on hearing different ways of thinking.

That kind of collective learning matters especially in the era of AI, the professors argued, as distinctly human skills—attention span, curiosity, judgment, empathy, and collaboration—become more valuable. Their argument tracks a broader rethinking of what schools should emphasize as AI tools automate tasks that once required trained human knowledge workers, placing a premium on skills machines struggle to replicate, such as reasoning through ambiguous problems and working across disagreement.

"Children don't need school to become more like the digital world," they wrote. "They are already immersed in that world for much of the time outside school hours. They need a place designed for other aims, such as conversation instead of consumption and collaboration instead of personalization. That isn't resisting the future; it's preparing children to be fully human in it."

Computers and online learning expanded steadily in classrooms for decades, then became indispensable during COVID-19 lockdowns, when districts rushed to buy laptops and tablets with federal pandemic relief aid. Rather than reverting to pre-pandemic practices afterward, schools continued to lean heavily on them.

Now a backlash is building. According to one tally, lawmakers in at least 17 states had introduced or debated legislation related to devices or screens in classrooms as of July. Earlier this year, Los Angeles Unified, the nation's second-largest school district, banned in-school screen use for students in preschool through first grade and curtailed screen time for older students.

Meanwhile, growing evidence suggests devices harm not only test scores but children's ability to think.

In written testimony earlier this year before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations despite having unprecedented access to technology. Gen Z, he noted, is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before it, and he cited a stark correlation between test scores and time spent on computers in school.

While the skills measured by such tests are not always indicative of intelligence, they do reflect cognitive capability—which Horvath said has been declining over roughly the past decade.

"We're facing challenges more complex and far-reaching than any in human history—from overpopulation to evolving diseases to moral drift," he told Fortune's Sasha Rogelberg. "Now, more than ever, we need a generation able to grapple with nuance, hold multiple truths in tension, and creatively tackle problems that are stumping the greatest adult minds of today."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.