By Lily-Anne Gibson & Amber Booysen
Simphiwe sits in a buzzing lecture hall with his phone in one hand and his laptop open in front of him. On his mobile, a TikTok video flashes past. On his laptop, a ChatGPT tab waits hungrily for the next prompt. “Any questions? the lecturer asks. No hands go up. Most of the students’ answers are coming from somewhere else.
Across South Africa, this scenario is fast becoming the new normal. As iPads, laptops and smartphones fill lecture halls and classrooms, more students are feeding basic questions into Gemini, Copilot or ChatGPT for quick, bite-sized answers instead of taking notes, reading the articles and engaging sufficiently with the work.
In 2024, Oxford University Press named “brain rot†its Word of the Year, linking it to endless scrolling, low-value online content and the feeling a sharp brain devolving to mental mush.
Kate (not her real name), a Grade 11 learner from Nelson Mandela Bay, sees it around her every day.
“It’s embarrassing,” she says. You can tell people aren’t thinking for themselves anymore. It is always, “What’s the next AI bot I can use? or “How can I make this easier? No one appreciates doing their own work”.
Kate says it is not just about marks. It is also about how people treat one another.
“As AI has become more popular, people have become colder and rude, especially towards teachers. It is like they respect the chatbot more than the person in front of them”.
Screens in class
In many well-resourced schools, iPads and other devices have replaced paper textbooks. According to education platform providers and school reports, more than 180 public and private schools in South Africa have integrated iPads or similar devices into their classes.
On the surface, it looks modern and convenient. But some teachers say the trade-off is not worth it.
A teacher from Collegiate Girls High School in Gqeberha, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is not a fan.
“I find teaching classes with students on their iPads horrible and not educationally sound,” she says.
“Learners are distracted. If I had the choice, iPads would not be used in classrooms. Maybe in certain moments they help, but generally I do not see them having a great impact. Learners would benefit more from having no iPads in class. It would be freeing for them not to have that distraction.
Head of Secondary School Education at Nelson Mandela University’s Education Faculty, Dr Ismail Badroen, does not quite agree with the negative rap.
“For me, the device itself isn’t the problem; the real risk is when learners use it mainly for passive scrolling rather than for purposeful learning tasks that build reading, writing, reflection, and problem-solving skills,” he says.
Enter the Bots
The push to modernise education with tablets and laptops has also opened the door for GenAI tools in classrooms. Apps like ChatGPT, Meta AI, DeepSeek and Quillbot are now a normal part of daily student life, especially at university.
“AI is not going anywhere, so we just need to learn how to use it,” says Storm (surname withheld on request), a first-year Engineering major at Nelson Mandela University.
For Storm it started as a way to keep up.
“I use ChatGPT when I am stuck or when lecturers are not available, he explains. I have actually learned a lot by teaching myself with AI. Big companies use it all the time. It just makes life easier”.
Instead of waiting for an email reply or queuing for a consultation, students can ask a chatbot to explain a concept, summarise a reading or help draft an email in seconds. For learners juggling assignments, part-time jobs, transport time and family responsibilities, it can feel like having a private tutor in their pocket.
Lazy or learning
Not everyone is convinced this is a good thing. A recent matriculant, now studying at university, worries that GenAI is eating away at real thinking.
“iPads and other devices can be useful in schooling,” she says. But I think AI is corrupting the brain and has roots in anti-intellectualism. It stops people from thinking for themselves and will dumb down schools if it keeps being used like this”.
“I think it takes away the humanness from teaching. Schools are meant to help you think for yourself, gain social skills and make that bridge between family and society. I do not see how AI can understand that. Humans created language, not machines. You need the human experience if you want to learn anything”.
But Badroen, who has developed an AI chatbot designed to assist student-teachers in developing CAPS- and IEB-approved lesson plans in their mother tongue (native language) and various Learning and Teaching Support Materials (LTSM), says what is happening is far more complex than that.
“Many teachers quietly use AI to draft lesson plans, create worksheets, translate materials into African languages and design activities for learners at different ability levels. The difference comes down to whether we ask learners to critically engage with the AI (i.e., to compare sources, question assumptions, and justify their reasoning) or whether we let them treat it as a replacement for effort”.
Copy, paste, regret
Universities are also worried. While some students use GenAI to check concepts or practise exam questions, others hand over the whole job. Students may shine on polished classwork, then flunk tests and exams because there is no real understanding underneath.
Under pressure, many students say these tools feel impossible to avoid. In written assignments it can be even worse. Some students paste entire assessment briefs into an AI, then use word spinners like Quillbot or Grammar.ly to rewrite the answer in whole or in part. On the surface, the work looks neat. Underneath, there is very little learning. The mental heavy lifting has been outsourced to a bot.
Storm says none of this is a secret among students.
“Everyone is aware of AI and everyone is using it in some way,” he says. Some students just do not really know how to use AI properly. That is where things go wrong”.
Mind the Gaps
Then there is the digital divide. Access to educational devices and powerful GenAI models is not equal. With tablets costing thousands of Rand while the median household income is about R95 770 a year, or just under R8 000 a month, many families simply cannot afford devices or data.
The result is a double split: between those who can access digital tools and those who cannot, and between those who use them thoughtfully and those who drift from one app or AI answer to the next.
Badroen believes that if teachers are going to meaningfully and safely embrace AI in high schools and lecture halls, three things are essential.
First, educators need proper hands-on training, with real time to explore the strengths and limits of GenAI and learn how to integrate it ethically into their subjects. Next, assessment needs serious rethinking. AI can complete an assignment perfectly, then the assignment itself needs redesigning. More process-focused tasks, in-class reasoning activities, oral explanations and asking learners to submit their prompts can reduce misuse while teaching responsible practice”.
Finally, he argues, AI and digital literacy should become part of everyday teaching across subjects. When learners are asked to critique or correct an AI-generated answer in History, Life Sciences or Languages, they build critical thinking instead of blind dependence, and teachers can keep the humanness that makes education more than just content delivery.
For now, the real test for South African students is not whether they have the latest app, tablet or bot. It is whether they can still focus, think deeply and stand by their own ideas without a screen doing the work for them.
Article provided courtesy of the Khulani! Youth Journalism project
Image: https://online-engineering.case.edu/
