The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
I hate how the term Luddite has been co-opted as a blanket term for someone who rejects technology for any reason. The original Luddites were a labor movement who were angry that technology was taking people’s livelihoods while society was doing nothing to prevent those people from becoming destitute.
Kinda exactly how AI is going to fuck over a lot of people while primarily benefiting the rich people who own it.
I did that in uni, too. Everyone brought their laptops to the lectures while I took notes on paper. Writing by hand makes your brain absorb the information better I think
Not just what you think. Hand writing is scientifically better for memory retention and more https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/
It does. I vastly prefer writing notes by hand than typing em. But my handwriting sucks when I have to write quickly, and I also don’t like lugging around giant stacks of paper. And so I settled on a digital writing pad, and just do the work to type my notes later. Acts as revision too.
Is taking notes by hand really that exceptional? When I went to college ages ago I only typed essays on a desktop computer, studying was done with textbook + lecture notes, maaybe with a handful of online resources.
I can kind of see this right now. I’m in a first year course and almost everyone has a laptop in front of them. I’m in a fourth year course and most people use paper notes. It could be survivorship or a result of differences in the desks, or it could be generational.
I graduated college a few years back and can count on one hand (with fingers to spare) how many times I saw someone hand writing notes in class
Is now a good time to complain about that one guy who brings a $3000 gaming laptop to the computer science lectures because expensive stuff makes him a good programmer and proceeds to distract people accross the room by the sheer volume of his fan spinning?
Imagine choosing suffering voluntarily in 2025. What a privileged fuck.
I’m pretty sure that “not using a laptop is suffering” is actually the privileged take here.
I really like being able to
Ctrl+Fthrough my book.
But there just seems to be some kind of feel to flipping a page that makes me feel more focussed.Your book does one single thing, you cannot be distracted by other functions.
Engagement. I’m a teacher and using all of your senses to look for information makes you remember that said piece of information more.
It’s funny, most studying comes down to that… And motivation, which is also something you have if you prefer books over laptop.
I think it’s the mental work of “I don’t have to do anything, it will find it for me” and “I have to find it myself” and I think it puts you in a state mentally and keeps you there. You don’t have to disengage because there’s something else doing the work.
The trick is to buy dead tree and also download the same book from the usual online libraries.
Went to school before the late '90s: Write everything in paper notebooks & exam books.
Went to school between late '90s-2020s: Tap it all into a computer. Learn nothing.
Went to school late 2020s on: Write in paper notebooks, in between scavenging the ruins for food.
Let me guess. They don’t use a laptop, but brag about it endlessly on tiktok with a holier-than-thou attitude? It’s just content farming then.
Have you seen people on TikTok bragging about this or are you just coming up with hypotheticals for funsies?
Title is misleading:
Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand.
The second sentence contradicts the first:
stopped using his laptop for university work
then
He still types his essays
So basically he’s not taking a laptop in to the lecture hall to take notes etc but is still using a computer to complete his work. Which makes sense as pen & paper in that environment is way more practical anyway.
Maybe he’s lugging a massive typewriter around.
I’ve got images of the lecturer giving him death stares every time he starts typing, filling the room with the cliter-clatter of the keys.
It’s great because it’s audible when the lecturer can continue or when not takers are still catching up.
I used to take my laptop into the lecture hall but I hardly ever actually used it.
Same. I mostly used it for homework between classes.
I found the most effective strategy for me was to do the reading before class, bring the book in to refer to, listen intently for things I didn’t get from the book, and reread the section after class. If the professor specifically called out something to take notes on, I’d either do that on my phone or pull out my laptop (esp just before midterms or finals).
My handwriting is awful and I almost never refer to my notes anyway.
Studies have also shown that taking notes by writing causes better learning outcomes compared to typing.
That’s only true if you don’t refer to your notes. Reviewing notes has a much stronger correlation to remembering than how those notes are generated.
Wasn’t the case for me for information dense subjects like biology related subjects. Found I didn’t retain anything, but worst of all my notes were so messy I couldn’t even use them, so ended up wasting time having to go back and listen to the lecture again to create notes I could study off of and make short summaries of to start memorizing.
Some exceptions to typing has been problem solving basic subjects like math where there’s no rush to try to get down bunch of information, so for that I definitely go handwriting. Doesn’t make sense to type that either. But, for really information dense subjects its typing all the way.
I have ADHD and didn’t get diagnosed or medicated until after I was out of school.
I basically had two options: pay attention in class or attempt to take notes.
I had so many teachers in grade school complain I didn’t take notes, or do homework but that was a different complaint. The issue was that when I took notes I would miss chunks of information as I was writing and my writing was basically illegible because I was trying to put it down fast. If I slowed down to make it neat I would miss even more information. So any notes I took would be next to useless and I wouldn’t remember anything. And that’s without even determining what I needed to write down.
Grade school was also slow passed and repetitive enough that most of the time I could sit and watch or doodle while listening and retain the information. Basically the only thing I struggled with was spelling because it was just rote memorization.
College was a bit harder in some cases beyond general ed, but for the classes I needed to study for I was able to re-watch the recorded lectures and take the time to write stuff out since I could rewind and pause.
Can confirm, switched away from laptop notes to incomprehensible-to-others fountain pen writing. Writing is the important part anyway.
Yeah, the way he does it is basically how everyone did it even 10 years ago. The tools were mostly the same then as they are now, with the exception of AI and the fact that handwriting wasn’t as big a thing anymore when today’s undergrads were in school. If you have a fluid and moderately quick handwriting, paper notes will typically be easier to take and more useful for revising the material later on.
All assignments are submitted electronically now, and if he’s in philosophy, he will also have to follow formatting requirements like font, font size, margins, and spacing. Practically, he’s doing as much as he is allowed off-computer.
Honestly I used to do the same a decade ago in engineering before changing majors mainly cause my laptop was a fucking brick.
They’re still using computers to do their university work and submit it though. It’s more about them not using a laptop in a lecture hall and using pen and paper instead. That’s not really a big deal considering that’s probably what most people were doing anyway up until relatively recently.
Laptops are extremely useful. It really doesn’t make sense to avoid them.
I pretty much treat mine as my second brain.
As someone who studied without laptop through an entire bachelor’s degree - it is a valid option, and I still often make handwritten notes of study materials.
When you write things down by hand, you process information for longer and use more parts of your brain to do so, which genuinely helps to memorize study materials.
It also allows for more focus. Personally, I found that when I moved, eventually, to using laptop in my studies, it has reduced my attention span and added unnecessary distractions. When all you have at your fingertips is paper and a pen, there is nowhere to get astray.
eh. i prefer desktops. i see the use of laptops, but i prefer to use as little disposable tech as possible.
Maybe something like a Framework would be appropriate?
Getting an old thinkpad is probably better, way cheaper, and fits into the reuse to keep something from going yo the landfill.
it’s closer to my wants, but basic spreadsheets are all my clients need right now and that really doesn’t need any more processing power than a phone has. i plug a keyboard and a mouse in and i’m able to work off of there. if i really need to i can cast to a screen, even got a couple usb-C male to hdmi male cables.
i’m always going to need some kind of non-pocket computer, and the desktops are so much cheaper. and modifiable! my last one lived 16 years as the main PC. I tend to ship of theseus them.
Just remember to back that shit up.
Nothing like forgetting your brain on public transport and getting instant amnesia for the past five years.
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That’s not what being a Luddite means
What a pedantic (and incorrect) take. Luddite can absolutely mean a person who purposefully avoids technology.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but words can have multiple meanings and take on new meanings over time. Luddite is one of them. This article used it properly.
And anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my linguistics-degree-holding ass.
“Modern day” Luddite. It’s not just using the word isolated! Tittle clearly mixes the meaning with the historical reference. Plus, the one being pedantic were you… But thanks anyway for pointing out the word has two definitions.
Yeah, there’s this stereotype that professional/qualified linguistics are like super prescriptive but in reality most either don’t give a shit or are interested in informal language
In your defense, the statement specifies “modern-day Luddite” which compares it to the historical Luddite bands and excludes the first meaning of the Oxford dictionary.
Also, avoiding is not the same as opposing.
What does it mean then?
“He goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt”
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He doesn’t seem very opposed to technology if he just goes straight home and doomscrolls
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Are laptops really new technology to this kid if they’ve existed for his entire life?
$5 says it’s the “what’s a computer” kid from like a decade ago
“‘laptop’? it’s like a foldable but with half a screen??? and why is this keyboard broken, all the keys move?? how do I get an overwatch skin for it?? this is awful”
It’s important to recognize phrasing in þe definition. It’s
… opposed to new technology
not
opposed to a new technology.
People opposed to nuclear power are not Luddites. People who don’t like computers are not Luddites. People who are opposed to a hypothetical cancer vaccine are not Luddites. People opposed to autonomous murder robots are not Luddites.
Refusing to use some specific new technology because you believe it’s harmful (wheþer you’re right or wrong) does not make a person a Luddite. Þe connotations of “Luddite” is a person who opposes broad swaths of technology, and it was originally because of economic concerns. Like, opposing all automated manufacturing, because it takes jobs away from people. Þat’s literally where þe term came from.
Þese kids oppose a new technology, not all new technology, and not necessarily because fucking stupid, incompetent decision makers are replacing people wiþ LLMs, but because using LLMs has been shown - in studies - to make people more stupid.
Yeah: if you use LLMs, it’s making you more stupid. You - you vibe coders. You’re getting more stupid. You’re not going to believe me, no matter how many studies I throw at you.
Þese kids are þe smart ones.
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i much prefered writing notes on paper but i’d cry if i had to write an essay by hand, i hope those students aren’t torturing themselves this way
Every English class at my uni has huge, like 10-page essays (can you even call them essays at this point?) where we cover scientific developments in our field we discovered in that month.
Everything is handwritten because “there were students who used LLMs, and they need to be sure at least some effort is put into admission”. Like, just to spite on LLM users and all of us just in case.
o.o holy shit- i mean that’s a valid move, using AI for a handwritten piece sounds like a pain in the ass, but so does just writing 10 pages by hand, AI or not!
i’m glad i got through my higher education marginally before the AI boom hit (i graduated 3 years ago). i only had Turnitin yell “PLAGIARISM???” at me when i used a common phrase that another student used at some point somewhere (think - “The research suggests…”, or sometimes even the page numbers), good times good times
When I was in undergrad I had to write lots of essays by hand. I’d say about every other course in one of my majors had midterms and finals that were a single question essay to be completed in class during the testing period. I figured that was pretty typical.
I absolutely love doing everything on the computer and can’t stand writing things by hand anymore. I’ve always learned simply by listening — instructors that force students to take notes were the worst because I would be too busy scrambling to write things down than actually listening and learning.
All of this goes out the window when it comes to foreign language though. I have to do everything old school: textbooks, pencil and paper, and if it’s a non-Latin character set I have to write the same characters over and over for hours.
I love digital because it is so easy to go back and reference old notes too. I use obsidian, and being able to go back and recall something I need a more detailed refresher on is so convenient.
My handwritten stuff got trashed because I’m not digging through all that and was just taking up space.
For me I always wrote as i listened, still do often. I rarely read the notes back.
‘Revision’ was just writing a whole new set of notes either from memory or from sources. Then, never reading that set of notes.
Massive waste of paper and ink, but it’s part of how i pay attention. Most of my lecturers did provide printouts of all the slides, but I’d scribble all over them anyway.
Typing doesn’t do the same thing at all for me.
I realized that when i tried to cheat on a test in school, that when i prepared a cheat sheet, i didn’t actually need it afterwards - that only applies when writing the sheet by hand.
I always take notes, listening shmistening it’s in one ear out the other, reading and writing helps me absorb information much easier, but I never did take notes when we were forced to use pen and paper, once we switched to laptops in high school, I could note down every word because typing is so much easier and faster.
Not using a laptop because it can distract you is like shrinking your stomach because you can’t stop eating. Oh, wait…
Stop eating? As if I would grasp the concept of moderation.
Restricting your diet and skipping meals is the best way to lose weight.
You can also overdo that. Stay healthy and don’t stress your body too much. Slow and steady wins the race.
Higher grocery prices are great motivating factor to skip meals.
I do that but its actually because I just don’t own a laptop and don’t want to buy one
