Gen Z has managed something no modern generation pulled off before. After more than a century of steady academic gains, test scores finally went the other direction. For the first time ever, a new generation is officially dumber than the previous one.
The data comes from neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, who has spent years reviewing standardized testing results across age groups. “They’re the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized academic tests than the one before it,” Horvath told the New York Post. The declines cut across attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, and general IQ. That’s not just one weak spot. That’s the whole darn dashboard blinking at once.
Horvath took the same message to Capitol Hill during a 2026 Senate hearing on screen time and children. His framing skipped the generational dunking and focused on exposure. “More than half of the time a teenager is awake, half of it is spent staring at a screen,” he told lawmakers. Human learning, he argued, depends on sustained attention and interaction with other people. Endless feeds and condensed content don’t offer either.
As a millenial who went through the shite by the media about how much of a snowflake we are by getting offended with everything, frivolous for ordering avocado toasts for breakfasts, and clueless and unequipped when it comes to working, I ask: “who raised us?” I remember the parents’ moral panic on videogames and cartoons in the 1990s and 2000s. Many kids of my generation weren’t let out because the boomer and Gen X parents were made afraid by the constant news cycle of serial killers and high crime rate. And they wonder why we’re so sheltered? Now, the media run by older generations are taking potshots at Gen Z claiming they are dumber. Even if that is the case, who are the ones who raised Gen Z to be constantly glued to the phone screen and watching brain rotting contents that led to lower IQ?
The next time the media complains such and such generation is behaving a certain way or being dumb, even if scientific study says so, ask yourself, who are raising these kids?
I always bring this point up when somebody older goes on about “Participation Trophies” - Who invented them?! I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t the kids who were getting them. The same damn people that complain about them are the people that brought them into reality.
Both can be true at the same time.
The result and the thing that caused it, doesn’t change the fact that the result would be there tho.
Recently saw a kid with a tablet glued to their pram so they couldn’t look away. Without the ability to study the faces of adults in real time, this child may develop an intellectual disability.
I think if there is any true truth to it, it’s the systematic dismantling of the education system.
I do have an observation though, there is less need these days to push into the unknown. We’ve engineered everything to come out of the box so user friendly that if you don’t want to know about how something works, you can still get by just fine. Your car tells you you’re low on oil, and your tire is flat and it’s time to replace the transmission fluid. Wifi is ubiquitous. If you want to know about something, it’s available on demand. I’ve forgotten far more details about wars and countries that i’ll ever need to use in my life and if I ever need them, they’re right there 5 seconds to run a search or ask a local AI.
The people who are into tech and history and math are into it because they like it, for the most part machines are here to answer any questions you might have as long as you already have the broad strokes to know what you want to ask.
I’m GenX, My kids are both excelling at math and getting some semi-gentle prodding to get a little programming and art under their belts. I certainly don’t hold them in the house, but I don’t force them out either. There’s hardly any other kids out, they have access to social activities. Free ranging wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. You’re bored, you bike over to somebody’s house, they’re bored, their parents kick you all out, you ride your bikes down roads that are too busy, sneak into places you shouldn’t be just to break off the boredom.
The media is def all propaganda now, it has been for much longer than any of us would like to admit. I worked with a guy in the 00’s that had a CNN lies bumpersticker, I looked it up, yeah they kinda did on a few things. Every news carrier out there as at least some small agenda. TikTok, IG, FB are all full of it practically all you can do is pick some sources that don’t appear to be too bad (AP) and use a large pinch of salt when anything is reported.