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# Schools adopt Big Tech's manipulative growth tactics
- URL: https://adjacent.media/signals/schools-adopt-big-techs-manipulative-growth-tactics/
- Published: 2026-09-11T16:14:18.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-11T16:14:18.000Z
- Description: Educational institutions are now mimicking the engagement-maximization strategies that made social platforms and consumer tech products dominant—creating artificial urgency, manufacturing FOMO, and designing curriculum around tool adoption rather than foundational skills.
- Author: Jonathan Greene
- Tags: #signal, theme-culture, education policy, technology adoption, generational skills

Source: [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/policy/993308/computer-science-ai-education-coding-kids?ref=adjacent.media)

Educational institutions are now mimicking the engagement-maximization strategies that made social platforms and consumer tech products dominant—creating artificial urgency, manufacturing FOMO, and designing curriculum around tool adoption rather than foundational skills. This shifts the burden of tech literacy from companies to public schools while inadvertently training students to accept and normalize the exact behavioral mechanisms that tech companies use to capture attention and data. Students learn how to use specific platforms before learning why to think critically about them.