When It Comes to Classroom Technology, Keep “Addictive By Design” Far Away From Students
If you’ve been following the headlines lately, you’ve probably seen a shift in how people are talking about social media. With the recent lawsuits that revolve around Meta, TikTok, SnapChat and YouTube knowingly investing in and creating features that keep young students addicted to their products, I think it’s an important inflection point for all educational technologies used in schools. What used to be framed as engaging or fun is now being described in courtrooms and legislation as something far more concerning: addictive by design. These recent lawsuits have focused on design elements like infinite scroll and autoplay, features that were intentionally built to keep users on the platform for as long as possible . And now, the flood gates are open. Thousands of similar lawsuits are now in motion, and lawmakers are beginning to require warning labels for platforms that use these kinds of “predatory” features with minors . On a personal note, I couldn’t be happier about this turn of events. I know that I am addicted to my phone, and so is everyone else in my family. If you teach children, you know that they are too. I am SO thankful that my own children spent their first few years device free. It makes me so sad to see kids everywhere I go with their eyes glued to screens. I believe that this moment really matters for educators. But more importantly, it gives us a chance to step back and ask a simple question: What should educational technology be designed to do?
For years, educational technology companies have quietly borrowed these ideas from the social media world. Engagement became the goal. “Stickiness” became a feature. Time-on-platform became a an important measure of the effectiveness of the app. Many of our customers want to know how much time their students have spent using our tools. To me, as a person who designed a platform that is now used by millions of students around the world, it has never been about “stickiness” - it has always been about whether engagement is more important than intentional use. When designing features I’ve always asked myself why would music educators need to use it and what exactly they are asking their students to do with it. For almost all of them it’s a destination to complete assigned tasks. We know that the most common use of our tools, when used this way, require the students to use our platform for only a few minutes - log in, do the task, submit it, log out. And we’re really happy with that. While tech bros and policymakers are increasingly focused on how platforms use algorithms and behavioral psychology to keep students hooked, often at the expense of their well-being, we know that’s a very different goal from what we should be aiming for in education.
When I started designing the MusicFirst Classroom, we made a conscious decision to not chase those same design patterns. You won’t find infinite scrolling feeds, autoplay loops, or reward systems designed to trigger compulsive behavior. And that’s not because we couldn’t build them, it’s because we chose not to. That’s not to say that adding gamification features to keep kids engaged is a bad thing - not at all. It simply depends on HOW and WHY you want the students to use the technology. If you want them to spend as much time as possible practicing and are using our platform to track that, cool. There’s no doubt that gamification can help with keeping them practicing. But building features that just keep students on the platform doesn’t necessarily mean they’re learning more. In fact, it can mean the opposite. We should always be asking important questions about the tools that we use with students: Is the student practicing? Are they improving? Can I assess their progress?
That’s why the MusicFirst Classroom and MusicFirst Elementary are designed around purposeful interaction, not passive consumption. Instead of being addictive by design, we are designed for learning - a very important distinction. Students log in to complete a task, demonstrate understanding, or create something meaningful. Then they move on. That’s not bad at all - it’s the whole point. In a world where students are already surrounded by systems engineered to capture their attention, education should be the place where they learn how to direct it. More importantly, I firmly believe that a performance ensemble rehearsal is often one of the only times during the school day that students shouldn’t have a device in their hands. They should actively be making music. Perhaps more importantly, in an elementary music classroom having young students passively consuming videos instead of actively making music should be avoided at all costs. Music class is often one of the only times during the K-5 schedule where students can actively learn about something and have fun at the same time. They consume enough media when they’re at home.
I believe that these recent legal cases highlight something many educators already suspected: when technology is built to maximize engagement above all else, student well-being becomes secondary. The research surrounding young people and social media apps continues to show that algorithm driven platforms can nudge young users toward harmful or emotionally intense content, sometimes within minutes of use . And unfortunately, that’s by design. Systems that are optimized for retention, and not learning, should be nowhere near a classroom.
At MusicFirst, we take the opposite approach. The tools and content that we offer music educators focus on outcomes over time spent on the app. They facilitate assessment over distraction, and creation over consumption. Tools like PracticeFirstpowered by MatchMySound, Sight Reading Factory, and Flat for Education are there to support musical growth, not to compete for attention and potentially meaningless “time spent on the app”. We do track usage and we know categorically that teachers and students are using our tools and content exactly as we envisioned: to help students learn music. I’m really proud of that.
The key takeaway here isn’t that all educational technology is bad. Not at all. It’s that intent matters. As teachers, you now have more responsibility when choosing tools for your students. I think that the first step is to ask yourself the following questions:
Is this platform helping my students learn, or just keeping them busy?
Is it really helping my students, or is it a distraction?
Is it aligned with my instructional goals?
Can I do the same thing better without technology?
Once you know the answers to these questions, deciding on what tools to use with your students should be an easier decision. What we have built at MusicFirst takes all of these questions into consideration. They have guided the design of the platform itself from the beginning. I really think that we are entering a new phase in education technology, one where the question is no longer “How engaging is it?” but “What is it designed to do?” The lawsuits surrounding social media sites and their clear intention to addict their users to spend as much time as possible on their apps clearly illustrates that when companies invest in features that make their apps more “sticky” rather than more useful, it can be harmful to the students in our classrooms. As music educators, this is the last thing we want to do.
What do you think?