Giving a child a laptop won’t necessarily improve their education. It could do quite the opposite:
It turns out that kids in households lucky enough to get computer vouchers spent a lot less time watching TV—but that’s where the good news ends. “Vouchered” kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades, and reported lower educational aspirations than the “unvouchered” kids.
As counter-intuitive as it may be, given how we’ve spent the last decade being lectured on how technology engenders learning, Malamud and Pop-Eleches’ research seems correct. While a laptop provides access to a wealth of information, that access is only valuable if the child is either pre-disposed to reaching out for it or is in an environment where he’s forced to. And most kids would rather be on MySpace than Wikipedia.