I want to share something I’ve been sitting with after visits to several schools this year.

In one school, a teacher told me her Grade 7 students couldn’t sustain focus on a single reading task for more than eight minutes. In another, a principal said they had removed free reading time because students “didn’t know what to do with silence anymore.” In a third, a teacher confessed she had stopped assigning longer essays. Not because they weren’t valuable. Because the battle to get students to actually sit and write one had become exhausting.

None of these teachers were complaining. They were just describing reality.

Magnifica Humanitas describes it too, and doesn’t soften it. Pope Leo XIV writes that the digital attention economy is deliberately designed to exploit psychological vulnerability. Platforms are built to capture attention, especially young attention, in ways that erode the capacity for depth, silence, and genuine focus. And then he says something I think many of us have needed to hear out loud: it is difficult for parents to resist this alone.

He’s right. And I’d add, it’s difficult for individual teachers to resist it alone too.

This is a structural problem. In my talks, I use the term “engagement-driven economics” to describe what’s happening. i.e., “a system where algorithms convert user interactions, likes, shares, comments, watch time, into commercial value.” The more time you spend, the more the platform earns. That’s the model. And it works precisely because it is designed to work on human psychology. It is not neutral. It is not accidental. It is intentional architecture built to keep people, especially young people, engaged and coming back. That machinery doesn’t stop at the school gate. It follows our students home, onto their devices, and back into the classroom the next morning.

What does this mean for us?

It means that a digital citizenship unit, a lesson on responsible use, an acceptable use policy, these are not enough. Leo XIV is naming a formation challenge. The interior freedom of young people is genuinely at stake. And formation, the patient, long-term shaping of a person’s inner life, is what schools exist to do. Catholic schools especially.

Here’s the honest admission I’ve been arriving at. I think we’ve been quietly letting go of what I the slow things. Sustained reading. Writing that takes real effort. A discussion with no right answer. Sitting with a hard question long enough for something to shift inside you. We let these go out of pressure, not carelessness. The curriculum is crowded. Students are restless. The digital world moves fast and we’ve been trying to keep up. But in keeping up, we may have been giving away the very things that make what we do irreplaceable.

The encyclical is asking us to protect the slow things. To do so with confidence, not apology. Our students need spaces where going deep is valued more than going fast. Schools can be that. But only if we decide to make them that. 

What is this part teaching me? That formation requires intentional resistance to the pace and shallowness that the digital environment tends to produce when left unchecked. Here are three places to start:

1. Name what you’ve lost. Have an honest conversation with your team. What slow, deep, formative practices have quietly disappeared from your school in the last three years? Name them before adding anything new.
2. Protect at least one slow practice per subject. Ask each department to identify one thing worth protecting. One assignment, one activity, one kind of assessment that requires sustained thought. Guard it. Don’t let it get optimized away.
3. Talk to students about their inner life. Not just their academic performance. Ask them: When do you feel most focused? When do you feel most distracted? What do you wish you had more space for? Their answers might surprise you, and they should shape what you build.

Formation doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone decided it was worth the effort. Be deliberate. Don’t make it a second thought, right after academics.

Francis Jim Tuscano is an education consultant and speaker focused on AI integration in Catholic and independent schools. Part 3 next week: On Building Together. Part 1 here.