SAN DIEGO — U.S. student reading and math scores have declined since 2013, according to the nation’s Education Scorecard released in May 2026 by Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project. From 2015 to 2025, average reading scores fell by nearly a grade level, with drops observed in almost every state.
Psychology professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University stated in 2026 that these academic declines are more strongly linked to increased technology and social media use than to immigration. “The timing lines up: Daily social media use soared in popularity beginning in the early 2010s, and became more algorithmic throughout the decade. Social media and other digital media—whether it’s on a phone or a laptop, even a school-issued laptop—distracts students in class when they should be learning,” Twenge said.
Twenge dismissed immigration as a primary driver of the score drops, noting demographic shifts were too small to account for the scale of decline. U.S. Census data shows the proportion of foreign-born children under 18 rose from 3.37% in 2015 to 4.36% in 2024. “Even if we assume that the foreign-born kids performed worse on reading tests—and that definitely wasn’t true of all of them—this is too small a shift to explain the dramatic declines in reading scores,” she said.
Her view is supported by a 2021 National Bureau of Economic Research study, which found that U.S.-born students with greater exposure to immigrant peers had higher reading and math scores. The study also noted foreign-born students were disciplined less frequently than their U.S.-born peers.
Twenge recommended delaying smartphone ownership until at least high school, using flip phones for emergencies, limiting student use of tablets and laptops in schools, and avoiding sending children home with additional screens. “There are some things students do need for college and long-term success. The ability to focus, think critically, and understand complex ideas. Devices undermine each of those. Books teach them all,” she said.
Critics like Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, contended that immigration depresses national test scores, stating, “If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of a sudden our test scores skyrocket. Issue after issue we talk about these things as if they just happen to us. The schools just suddenly fail. Violent crime just suddenly explodes. The deficit just suddenly skyrockets. These are a result of social policy choices that we made through immigration.” Former Maine Governor Paul LePage separately called Maine’s statewide laptop initiative a “massive failure,” citing stagnant test scores 15 years after its launch.