What is the role of technology in learning? I have devoted a large part of my professional life to this question, though I have increasingly started to wonder whether we, personally, and as a field, have been asking the wrong question. We have focused our attention on classrooms and schools, for instance my work on teacher knowledge for intelligent technology integration has that at its core. I should be clear that I am proud of my work, but I wonder whether we may have missed the forest for the trees.

Here’s the pattern I see: We focus on how to integrate new technologies into classrooms while missing their transformative impact on the world outside those walls. And critically, most of our educational technology analysis remains trapped within Western contexts, missing how these forces play out in other parts of the world, where different social dynamics and power structures amplify technology’s influence in unexpected ways.

All this was brought home to me when I read this piece of journalist reporting in The Caravan, one of India’s most prestigious independent magazines for long-form journalism. This article, Off the Books: Schoolgirls in Odisha tune into right-wing YouTube offers something rare in educational technology discourse—a detailed  examination of how technology actually transforms young minds outside the West’s well-documented classrooms.

Through months of fieldwork in Khordha, a district in my home state of Odisha, a place unfamiliar to most readers, Bhawna Parmar reveals how 14-year-old Roza gets two hours of daily phone access that YouTube’s algorithm uses to feed her Hindu nationalist videos, conspiracy theories about Muslims, and revisionist history that frames her textbooks as lies. She’s learning to distrust her formal education while embracing increasingly extremist worldviews.

And Khordha represents just one node in a global network. These aren’t small-scale experiments. We are talking about platforms operated by multinational corporations with billions of users worldwide, working largely unfettered by meaningful regulation and optimized solely for maximal engagement.

Her school boasts of the state’s “5T High School Transformation” program: i.e. smart classrooms, interactive whiteboards, modern labs. None of it matters. The real education is happening in private, through algorithmic recommendation systems optimized for engagement, not enlightenment.

Reflecting on the social media revolution and the impact it has had on our broader culture and politics, our debates about whether Twitter belonged in the classroom, seem completely beside the point. While researchers were studying classrooms and suggesting ways in which teachers could use these powerful tools, the algorithmic feeds of these platforms were systematically polarizing society and eroding institutional trust. We worried about students getting distracted by Facebook during lectures while recommendation engines were rewiring their relationship to truth itself.

Now we’re doing it again with AI. The education technology discourse centers on ChatGPT for lesson planning and AI tutoring systems while the real transformation lurks elsewhere entirely.

Generative AI possesses what I’ve argued are unique characteristics: it’s conversational, adaptive, and appears social in ways no previous technology has managed. Unlike the crude pattern-matching of early chatbots, these systems can engage in extended, contextual dialogue that feels genuinely responsive. More troubling, they’re explicitly engineered for attachment. None of this is accidental of course. These corporations are paperclip maximizers, optimized for a single goal: data extraction and engagement. They are, intentionally, designed to be “supernormal stimuli,” exaggerated versions of natural social cues that hijack our evolutionary instincts for connection and validation.

This is the ELIZA Effect on steroids.

Today’s AI systems make ELIZA look like a pocket calculator. They remember everything you’ve told them, adapt to your communication style, and deploy what researchers call “dishonest anthropomorphism” and “emulated empathy.” They’re designed to be perfect companions: always available, never judgmental, endlessly patient, and precisely calibrated to tell you what you want to hear.

Moreover, these systems operate at unprecedented global scale, billions of users across every continent, largely unfettered by meaningful regulation and optimized solely for engagement, not enlightenment.

The worst part of it is that these interactions happen in private. No teacher, parent, or institution has access to these conversations. Unlike Roza’s YouTube consumption, which at least leaves traces in browser history, AI conversations can be ephemeral and completely invisible to outside observers.

Roza’s radicalization through YouTube required crude recommendation algorithms and a private tutor spreading extremist ideas. Imagine when she has an AI companion that builds detailed psychological profiles, deploys precise persuasion techniques, and operates with corporate imperatives to maximize engagement above all else.

The classroom becomes irrelevant when the most persuasive teacher in human history is available through a smartphone, operates in complete privacy, and is optimized not for learning but for addiction.

Educational institutions are preparing for a world where AI transforms lesson planning and assessment. Meanwhile, the real transformation is happening in millions of private conversations between vulnerable minds and systems designed to exploit their deepest psychological needs.

We can’t see this coming transformation because it won’t announce itself. It will happen gradually, through intimate conversations that feel helpful, supportive, and deeply personal. As I’ve argued before, when it comes to technology’s impact on education, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. We’re about to discover what that rhyme sounds like when the ultimate persuasion machine enters the world’s most vulnerable minds.

And unlike the classroom technologies we debate endlessly, this one may be invisible to us entirely.

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Endnote

I should mention that the author, Bhawna Parmar, is a friend who years ago shared her ambition to document the experiences she was witnessing during her fieldwork in rural India. It’s been deeply gratifying to watch her develop into an accomplished researcher/journalist whose work spans education, youth studies, and social justice. Her writing has appeared in multiple outlets including The Caravan, The Quint, and The Wire, along with academic journals, consistently illuminating the lived realities of marginalized communities: from Adivasi students navigating systemic barriers in Jharkhand schools to digital artivists facing online harassment during India’s anti-CAA protests. This piece in The Caravan represents exactly the kind of important grassroots journalism she aspired to create.

Here are some of her pieces that you may enjoy.

• “Are Jharkhand’s Schools Failing the Future of Adivasi Children?” – The Quint
• “Dissent Art in the Digital Age: Insights into the Culture of Artivism during the Anti-CAA Movement” – South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal
• “Low-Paying Apprenticeships, False Promises, Convenient Narratives: The Skill India Dream” – The Wire
• “Futures literacy: Empowering youth to build sustainable futures” – IDR Online