It’s K shaped though, no? The death of the Flynn effect is largely because those who have access to parental resources and proactive education are overtaking people who don’t have those luxuries.
There are plenty of Gen Z who are well educated and have the capacity to understand the world more. However, the amount of people who are being left behind is probably growing as the educational and class divides are rising.
Sorry to be so direct - this is a frankly terrible article.
The paraphrased sections are not directly cited, the quotations are extremely brief and general, and sources either are not given or only the general publication (without specifics) are given, no numbers or comparators are given. The site layout appears intentionally messy to make it harder to avoid ad or ad-placed articles. Overall this seems to be content as a pretext for ads.
For anyone clicking through because they would like to read something more thought-out, here’s an article I found by googling the name of the person quoted, which gives more details:
fortune.com/…/how-did-us-spending-30-billion-doll…
I support people posting content, so no worries. I guess if anything, I just want to help people who were frustrated like I was find better content. I don’t mean for it to make you feel bad, keep posting, but the more you can share something that helps the reader, the better for everyone.
Yeah, this is Horvath again. My biggest complaint about his research is that it is almost entirely correlation. Horvath specifically blames “edtech” as the reason for the decline, completely glossing over what this article seems to claim as the cause, short form videos and content. Not to mention all of the other societal shifts during this time, like the effects of No Child Left behind on schools.
Anytime I see this guy trotted out and his claims said as fact I just can’t take the article seriously.
As a Gen X whose brain cells were supposedly fried in childhood breathing tons of leaded gas, I look upon my Gen Z offspring and have to say, a drop in intelligence is not at the top of my list of concerns for that generation. They seem a generally dispirited bunch. So much depression, anxiety, and isolation, coupled with bleak future prospects. I just want to give them all a hug, honestly.
Fun fact: Depression affects many things. Attention span, reaction time, engagement, memory, higher reasoning, spatial awareness… All things that (tangentially or directly) affect perceived intelligence.
Pretty damn good chance that we’re all sad because we know damn well just how fucked the world is, and we burned out before we ever got a chance to try.
… that said, I’ll totally take that hug. Hugs are great. 🫂
And yet, intelligent people are also far more likely to be depressed. Imagine how smart all those sad smart people would be if they weren’t sad about the state of the world all the time!
Yep, we got shit thrown at us, and in some ways it built good traits in us. But there was still some hope along with the fears in our time. I don't think we passed much of that down.
just vague citations by a new york post source of all things, and complete silence on how all the “effects of modern technology” have been also seen in other generations, see gen x and boomers loving those ai video misinformations to the point of renouncing their own proven knowledge
And considering your behavior elsewhere in the comments I don’t think you have much actual concern for them either
This is some intergenerational rage bait. Gen Z is just as smart and capable as any other generation. Human generations aren’t a hierarchy of ability and anyone who thinks they are better than a broad category of people is part of the problem. Racism and bigotry both stem from the same idea: some people are better than others and those people need to be discarded from society.
This article is pointless speculation by someone stirring up unwarranted sentiment.
Gen Z is just as smart and capable as any other generation.
The introduction of social media, with all the addiction, depression, anxiety, etc. associated with it has somehow managed to not affect peoples problem-solving skills? There are so many studies confirming how fucked the younger generations are regarding all kinds of mental health that it’s frankly absurd to believe those findings are completely independent of things like attention span and problem-solving skills.
They have the exact same potential as the generations around them - they didn’t get blasted with mutagen. The environment that contributed to allowing people to maximize their potential has been scuppered, tainted, and monetized, and particularly for the young, their own mental proclivities, which by the way, they have no ability to understand or override on their recognizance at early ages, are being weaponized against them by an army cognitive behaviorists and a mountain of psychological research.
I don’t see anyone here making this about hierarchy or anyone claiming that one group of people is “better” (or “worse") than the others.
That Gen Z is scoring worse in those tests is a fact.
Nobody says that Gen Z is “worse” because of that.
If anything this might make previous generations look bad whose decisions lead to the world gen z has to grow up in:
The school system, current crises, the pandemic, social media, etc.
To acknowledge those test results is the key to address what caused those results.
Then we can discuss:
What did we (yes all of us) do wrong (or right) that lead to this?
How to help Gen Z and future generations to unlock their potential
Or: Question if those tests are still relevant. Are those skills that were tested actually needed in our current time and are there important skills missing that were not tested?
Growing up all I heard was “wahh millenials, theyre so dumb because computer and calculators. Millennials aren’t as skilled as parents because soft and indoor office jobs. Millennials can’t fix/handyman things cuz lazy/consumerism”
Millennial here. The only thing surprising about a downward trend is that it didn’t start with Gen X and get progressively worse, to include us, with each generation.
As time goes, our planet gets closer to cooking us alive, Nazis are fucking surging in popularity, and the economy spirals further out of control… Yeah, that’s gonna have a not-so-great impact on our brain.
Looking at gen Z specifically, between COVID and AI slop, we kinda just destroyed like half of their education, so if they’re performing poorly on some academic metric: YEAH NO SHIT.
Alpha is even more fucked… But not as fucked as then gen after them!
AI slop was absolutely forced on them. Even if they’re not personally balls-deep into ChatGPT or some shit, they’re still stuck navigating an enshittified internet that’s gone from bad to shitstorm in just a few years almost entirely due to AI.
It’d be frustrating as all hell to try to write a research paper or piece together a presentation using today’s internet.
…um… would you mind pointing me to the other internet that wasn’t soiled by AI that genZ is using to dodge all the AI slop that would otherwise be forced on them? I’d very much like to use it.
No one forced Gen Z to use the trash to validate themselves with it. No one forced them to use it to do their thinking for them. We all use the same internet. Yet it seems only Z got dumber from it.
I’m not really sure what your point is. Did they all use the internet wrong and become dumber due to some sort of inherent moral failing predestined for humans born after the late 90s? Does being gen z on its own make someone somehow worse than everyone else? If the same people who now are gen z were somehow born instead in the 80s or 60s would they somehow improve or be the same people we see today? Are you suggesting it is their genetics from some generational decline? Or is there a supreme being who decided people born in that time frame wouldhave souls more inclined to make worse decisions for their intellectual development?
I can understand that you feel attacked and therefore defensive, but understand that saying a generation is bad because some studies prove it is not useful. We can say that overuse of LLMs or social media or digital classrooms has hindered their development. Blaming them for the fact that the people that raised them provided a provably poor developmental environment seems to be ducking the very accountability you claim to be striving for.
I never said a generation is bad. Just that it’s obnoxious that they consider themselves blameless and seemingly perfect in every way with next to no accountability for anything. I don’t hate them, I just have zero respect for anyone that doesn’t take respond for themselves.
I’m hopeful that by the time my nephew has worked out what his fingers are for the AI bubble will have popped and we can have moved back to some sort of reality.
The thing with us Millennials is we had to learn like multiple generations worth of stuff and then proceed to not only teach the older generation what we learned but also the younger generations. So naturally there are gaps.
It didn’t include us because we taught ourselves a lot of things because we had to, there was no one teaching us these things. We went from living in the early 80s and having dial up phones, tvs with maybe 3 channels, and for the vast majority of us no access to a computer. then suddenly we transition to cable tv, computers, cell phones, the internet, how to use the internet, how to build websites for the internet, how to communicate with others on the internet, online gaming, smart phones, how to use smart phones, high speed internet, CRT tvs to Plasma to HD, Beta to VHS to Laser discs to DVDs to bluray. having access to very little information to suddenly having access to all the information.
We had to learn how to use ALL this stuff and then teach Gen X and older how to use it followed up by Gen Z and younger. and that’s just the technology. that’s not including all the massive changes to society that happened during our formative years.
The younger generations don’t have any of these massive leaps because it’s all kind of stagnated or regressed. They’re not “forced” to learn anything new to use it or navigate it because we already did that for them. Gen Z doesn’t have to create content like we did, it’s all provided for them and most of it is of poor quality. Our content creation consisted of building our own websites, PHP forums, IRC rooms, building our own social networks, chatrooms, games, etc. They don’t have to do this.
And as far as education it’s the same deal. Remember we were told that we had to learn all this math because we’d never be able to “carry around a calculator with us at all times”. or we had to learn cursive because “that’s how everyone writes”. or that we MUST go to college because THAT’S the only way to get a job. Again because of the technology we built Gen Z and younger doesn’t need any of that, they don’t need to learn it and they’re not learning it.
At the end of the day we thought we’d be making their lives easier with what we HAD to learn but in turn, we’ve made their lives harder because we didn’t tell them WHY we had to learn it. we just handed it all to them and said “good luck.”
Millennial here. The only thing surprising about a downward trend is that it didn’t start with Gen X and get progressively worse, to include us, with each generation.
Having less lead floating around probably helped raise the intelligence level a bit from when boomers were mainlining that shit from all the cars driving around.
15 years ago if you started talking about intelligence in a scientific context, it feels like people would jump all over you. Now I notice it seems to be far more accepted. What changed?
Fads? Science on intelligence is solid and progressing steadily. We now can point to specific neural processes that determine how well brain operates and explain differences in intelligence. Popular understanding of intelligence is still stuck on basic IQ tests used to compare completely different populations. At some point some feel-good concepts like EQ caught on and it was fashionable to dismiss IQ as ableism or something. You can still see a lot of it but I guess enough research on intelligence is done and some of it still leaks through to the public.
underfunded education, extremely bleak prospects for the future that lead to mass anxiety and depression (which is bad for your brain, shockingly), and having your formative years during a pandemic whose long-term effects include cognitive impairment will do that to you, yea
it’s not excuses, just (informed) theories about material conditions that could lead to this
what’s your explanation for this? genuinely curious
i’m kinda doubtful that the blanket “technology = bad” thesis in the article is true, honestly. i’m obviously not a neuroscientist but it seems super reductive and simplistic to me, and altho i believe that yes reliance on short-form content and ai summaries isn’t good for your attention span, that’s 1. not the same thing as intelligence and 2. faaaaar from being exclusive to gen z (or gen alpha for that matter). look at any older person with a phone and you’ll see it. my parents waste a ton of time on the glowing rectangle too and they treat the google summary like the gospel
Check the other comments. Someone posted links from better sources that cite the actual studies. You may not like the results, but that doesn’t make them less true.
This has a ring of “it’s not racist if it’s true”. The people aren’t different, they were dealt a different hand. Nobody is disputing that the studies, which probably just measure test scores, are incorrect.
Listen, conservatives haven’t been working tirelessly for decades to erode American education just to have someone on the internet give the credit to the outcomes they cultivated…
Also AI chatbots. LLMs pretty much sealed it and will make Gen alpha perform even lower. Well, it will make everyone perform lower long term but Gen Alpha won‘t learn a lot of important thinking skills.
Not from your article but from one of the links someone else posted.
When students self-report classroom computer use, higher daily screen exposure consistently corresponds to lower scores in reading, mathematics, and science. The relationship is monotonic: more screen time, lower performance
So it’s not about the generation getting dumber as the headline would suggest, it’s screens rotting our brains. So it’s very likely that all generations intelligence has dropped.
The media did so well with putting the millennials against the boomers that they’re desperate for another version of the same fight. Their rich pay lords also probably won’t let them out a more honest headline which would be:
“it’s official: increased screen time reduces intelligence”
Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher-turned-neuroscientist, told the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that even though Gen Z spent more time in school than those in the 20th century, their intelligence levels dropped considerably. He said the current methods of education that rely on technology have led to the generation losing out big time. He shared data that he says clearly shows that cognitive abilities started to decline around 2010.
Wow, is the article writer “Gen Z”, with no understanding of how quotations, or, how the English language is traditionally used?
For someone having the original thought of bemoaning a generational intelligence gap (first time ever! woaw!), they sure don’t understand how to write an article without giving the impression of a mental disability.
Almost everything we know about Socrates is via Plato (Xenophon also mentions him, and there are some satirical references to him in Aristophanes). Plato ran an academy for the offspring of aristocrats, so he had a strong vested financial interest in propagandizing in favor of hierarchy and authority. This is one example.
The society we created for them is doing exactly what it id meant to do. Make docile consumers that don’t know better, with underfunded education and pretty much underfunded everything young people need, to maximize the juicy juicy profits for shareholders.
This is terrible, and I hope we can steer the ship around.
I don’t know how much of this is a reflection of the change in how much technology we’re forced to use or being able to see what differences in the world there are.
I can’t blame young generations for wanting to exclude themselves and put in the least amount of effort. It’s like, I went to Ireland, I go to nice tiny restaurant and my friend and I chat with a few gals who were much younger there. It’s interesting, they were on college break, and they always travel. They told us where there favorite places to go are and where they’ve been. And I thought, wow most friends I grew up with have never left the state they were born in. And quite frankly, they have very little interest in traveling so nothing to compare to.
I bring up these two points, because it seems like technology has filled that void of exploration and seeing the world in person. So you can sit there and watch videos or shorts of a different place you want to see but never end up going there.
It also seems like at this point, having a smart phone is shoved down your throat. It surprised me that retail workers have to have smartphones now. So it’s easy to doom scroll now. And the aspect of not traveling or seeing new things or meeting new people stunts mental growth.
I’ve seen you edited the post for the sources, good job.
I just wanted to point out that I don’t disagree with the article, I think it’s just poorly written: if you talk about “intelligence” you have to write “intelligently” otherwise it’s just old man yelling at cloud type of content.
The pandemic is likely responsible for a lot of it, even though people don’t want to talk about it. Covid is proven to reduce IQ, every infection is damaging the brian and the key finding is that people aren’t aware its happened to them.
The teachers I talked to told me children who had remote classes for a year were all behind both mentally and emotionally, not even because of infection, just because they basically skipped a year of life.
Most of kids get a smartphone before their teens and it’s not like they bought it for themselves… How can you hold a 12 years old accountable?
GenZ is like a giant, unaware focus group for a product (the smartphone/social media environment) that has been beta-tested after release. Only very recently, as a society, we’ve started to adjust to it
That’s the same for every generation, isn’t it? Have you ever heard a boomer recognize a mistake? And I’m not even going to mention GenX as they’re the least relevant generation of all time.
You’re using the Donald Trump’s “strategy of avoiding my question with disdain for the opposite”: do you seriously think a 12 years old (or younger) can be held accountable if you give them a highly addictive, brain-rotting, paranoia machine?
Every generation seems to have the same excuse of it ‘not being their fault’, by and large they are accurate. Millennials didn’t cause the Great Recession, they lived through it. Gen Z didn’t cause COVID, they lived through it.
Always deflect, never correct. Definetly at least one abusive parent.
What they did to you wasn’t right OK? Young people have no responsibility, stop blaming yourself for what happened. Start loving your inner child so you can love others as well, peace
I’m Gen X and starting to see a lot of the boomer “uphill both ways to school in the snow with no shoes” bullshit from Gen X. STFU you asshats. My generation simultaneously says it had the greatest time and then turns around and whines about whatever manufactured hardship they come up with when talking about outher gens.
Yeah, we DID and DO have the best of both pre- and post-tech worlds, we arguably had the last shot at the traditional school, college, walk-in-your-resumee career, then buy a home, and the generational motto is “fuck you” if anyone even remembers us, but siddown. Don’t turn into our parents, you assholes.
Millennials are already doing the same thing. Suffering Olympics about how they have had it worse than anyone else but at the same time are the best generation ever produced. FFS. We are all on this planet together, we really should work on improving it for everyone, rather than trying to tear each other apart of perceived slights.
I’d argue that the Millennials did have it bad. They got told they’d have the traditional path, then got shat on by boomers constantly telling them it was their fault for not succeeding because “avocado toast” and “Starbuck’s coffee”. Meanwhile the boomers kept yanking the rug out from under eveyone with boom-bust recessions while saying “oh, that just happens every “x” years” while pillaging the economy by deregulating and consolidating. The milennials got lied to, hard. Generations after them had the “benefit” of knowing they were already fucked.
Every generation has it’s own problems. I am sure Millennials think they had it bad until you realized Silent Generation had WWII, Boomers had Vietnam, Gen X had Iraq, it goes on and on. And yes, there is certainly a problem with society in general that has allowed for the rise of rampant consumerism following the 1950’s and hasn’t stopped. Millennial’s didn’t get lied to, they decided to act like their parents and not care about fighting a system that doesn’t care about them. Then they had children that care even less.
The current post-covid slump is worse than the Great Depression, and has similarly lead to wars and deaths comparable to WW2 combat casualties (not holocaust/pogrom level cleansing yet, although Israel, China and US/ICE have made some respectable efforts).
Vietnam was 20 years long, but the Ukraine war is already comparable in number of casualties.
Gen X Iraq is comparable to the war in Afghanistan.
But I’ll give the Greatest Generation some leeway, the Spanish Influenza was much deadlier than Covid, and they also had to live through the two world wars. That’s comparable to the Millennial experience (especially if we include HIV/AIDS pandemic), and we don’t yet know if the Millennials will experience a similar subsequent rise in life quality and wealth accumulation.
WionGen Z is officially less intelligent than millennials, first recorded intergenerational IQ dropGen Z is now officially the only generation to measure lower than their predecessors in intelligence. A neuroscientist says this is because short videos and summarised texts are being increasingly relied on, but this is not how the human brain works.
