Quite recently, the media was filled with headlines about mass failure in the latest JAMB examination. The natural reflex is to look for someone to blame teachers, curriculum developers, even the examination board. But I don’t think many parents truly understand what’s happening inside classrooms today.

The conversation we are avoiding is not just about academic failure, it’s about the psychological, neurological, and cultural shifts that are redefining what it means to teach and to learn in the digital age.

Today’s teachers are standing in front of students who are physically present but mentally checked out. These students live in a perpetual state of digital stimulation.

From the moment they wake up, they are fed a constant stream of dopamine through short-form content on TikTok, endless Instagram reels, notifications, YouTube auto-plays, and algorithmically tailored entertainment. Their brains are now wired to expect constant novelty and fast-paced stimulation two things traditional classroom learning struggles to deliver.

What happens then, when students are pulled away from that stream and placed in a quiet classroom, expected to concentrate, absorb, and reflect for extended periods? It’s like they’re experiencing dopamine withdrawal. They become restless, disengaged, emotionally volatile, and even resistant.

It is not uncommon to see students irritable, unmotivated, or even hostile toward instruction. This isn’t just a discipline issue, it’s a neurological one. The modern student is being conditioned to seek instant gratification, making it harder to delay gratification or sit through structured learning.

For teachers, this creates an exhausting paradox. Unless your lesson is packaged like a viral video, filled with sound effects, motion graphics, and entertaining punchlines, you’re competing with a brain that is constantly asking, “What’s next?” a brain that’s always expecting more stimulus. Educators today are not only teaching content; they’re competing against a 24/7 global entertainment industry embedded in every child’s pocket.

The effect is emotionally tasking. Picture a teacher standing in front of a classroom of 30 students, only about 15% of them truly paying attention, and even then, only in fleeting moments. The rest are staring vacantly, their eyes open but their minds elsewhere online. It’s as if you’re interacting with them in between hits of the internet, like you’re interrupting their “real life” to teach them something they don’t think they need.

Many teachers today can’t enforce basic classroom rules because of parental resistance. When a student misbehaves and is reprimanded, they go home and give their parents half the story or none at all. Instead of asking questions, parents jump to defend the child. Teachers are caught between disengaged students and defensive guardians, with little institutional support.

And yet, teachers are being held solely responsible for declining academic performance. But let’s be honest: if anyone deserves scrutiny, it’s not the educators. It’s the culture of unchecked digital immersion, the TikTok and Snapchat generation, nurtured in homes where smartphones are given freely but not guided with discipline. You can’t raise kids on unfiltered internet access and expect them to suddenly develop focus and resilience when it’s exam time.

AI and algorithmic technologies are adding a new layer to this. With AI-powered search engines, chatbots, and homework solvers, students no longer need to wrestle with concepts to understand them; they just outsource thinking.

The very process of learning; trial and error, persistence, revision is being outsourced. While AI is an incredible tool, when misused, it erodes critical thinking, originality, and curiosity the very traits education seeks to nurture.

We’re in the middle of a cultural crisis, not just an academic one. What’s at stake is more than grades, it’s the ability to think deeply, delay gratification, empathize, and build meaningful knowledge. These are long-term cognitive skills that TikTok and ChatGPT can’t develop for you. They require community, conversation, reflection, and yes discipline.

Teachers cannot solve this alone. We cannot continue expecting our educators to perform miracles in a system that does not support them. Schools must evolve, yes, but families must take responsibility.

We need digital literacy at home. We need screen boundaries. We need to parent intentionally. Handing your child a smartphone without a value framework is like handing them a car without teaching them to drive, that’s reckless.

The solution is not to ban technology. That would be naïve and counter-productive. The solution is to rebuild the digital habits of students from the ground up beginning with attention, presence, and balance. Parents must work with schools to build digital hygiene practices: screen-free hours, monitored content, limits on app use, and most importantly, conversations about what they’re experiencing online.

Governments and educational bodies must also move beyond surface-level reforms. We need technology-integrated curriculum reforms, educator support systems, mental health integration, and awareness campaigns that highlight the real-world implications of digital overexposure. A national dialogue on education without a digital wellness component is a conversation stuck in the past.

As a digital safety advocate, I am calling on all of us parents, teachers, policymakers, and tech leaders to rise to this moment. If we fail to respond holistically, we will continue to see declining results, burnt-out teachers, and a generation of students unprepared not just for exams, but for life in the real world.

Because at the heart of education is not just information, but transformation. And transformation requires attention, effort, and human connection, three things currently under threat in our digital-first world.

Isaac Damian Ezirim is an online safety advocate, Trust & Safety expert, cybersecurity professional, and social entrepreneur with a deep passion for digital inclusion, AI governance, internet safety, and digital well-being. His work focuses on creating safe, inclusive, and ethical digital ecosystems, ensuring that technology serves people, not harm them.