Idiocracy, here we come.
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
LMAO… loving the excuses.
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.
The idea that there’s no reason, and they’re less intelligent inherently with no causes is an entirely new kind of magical thinking.
Yeah. Go ahead and disregard proof. And in doing so, you’re just proving them right.
You haven’t provided any proof to disregard.
LMAO!
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…
They will live in the shithole world they cultivated, and be angry about the fact they live in a shithole.
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.
I thought we left the fearmongering and snide articles about the younger generation on reddit
I suppose it’s a good thing that this article does neither.
just vague citations by a new york post source of all things, and complete silence on how all the “effects of mofern 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
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.
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.
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
But they’re not. And there’s evidence to back it up.
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 of psychological research.
LMAO!
Do you think they aren’t human beings just like yourself?
Of course they are. wtf kind of stuidnqueseij is that?
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.
Also:
- Article: Refers to an actual study.
- You: “This article is pointless speculation”.
I always knew humanity peaked with me
User name 😆
OH GOOD GAWD THE CHILDREN
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.
I guess we can easily say this is a cycle. I wonder what’s the interval.
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”
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?
Drop in intelligence made people trust IQ scores were more than the garbage science they are. 😔
Spend enough time talking about something, and people will start to consider a serious topic worth discussing.
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.
Don’t they say this same shit about every generation?
And there’s always some “study” proving it. Proving that the last great, smart, cool, respectful generation was whichever one the author was from…
No. They don’t.
But they did?
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”
Right. You heard people whining about dumb shit. This isn’t the same. This is a study done with factual results.
Yea, that’s what they said about their takes too…
W/e man, take the bait. Do the artificial generational division bs. Around and around we go. Its totally different this time… totally
For almost a century, the Flynn Effect was the standard. Yet, suddenly, it ended with Gen Z. This isn’t opinions bud. It’s science.
You just don’t like the outcome.
Okaykiddo
How to tell when someone is out of gas:
Okaykiddo
Isn’t Gen Z also really conservative?
I don’t think so. Not from what I’ve seen. .
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!
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.”
Covid was forced on them. AI slop wasn’t. Each generation has its share of shit they were handed, and shut they could have easily avoided.
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.
It wasn’t. But to do you.
Counterpoint with proof: yes it was.
Okaybuddy.
Ah shit, you got me with that one. That right there is undisputable.
ggs 🤝
…um… would you mind pointing me to the other internet that wasn’t soiled by AI that genZ is using to dodge all the AL 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.
Imagine that.
This comes off as you disliking an entire generation more than anything else, not gunna lie.
No, it comes off as finding lack of accountability fucking annoying.
We absolutely do not use the same internet. The internet millennials grew up with in their developmental period no longer exists.
*Gestures broadly towards boomers, who seem to be accelerating their dementia by consuming endless facebook slop reels.
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.
Generational divides are a bullshit myth made to distract from the class divide
Yeah… only there’s evidence that suppers the claim. Man. Science is such a fucking burden. Isn’t it?
And you can tell when you interact with them.
IQ is a shit index, that shouldn’t be taken seriously
Yes, as a means of measuring intelligence. What it was designed to do, and what it is used for in a clinical context, is to measure for impairment against your peers.
So…. You didn’t read the article, and it shows. Maybe it is on to something.
I tried but nothing happened when I clicked “show full article.”
Yeah, well I think this thread has a very angry vibe and needs a picture of a cat!
The article does mention IQs being lower, though. It’s just not the only measure mentioned. I’m curious how the others were measured
No that doesn’t make IQ a good measurement of intelligence. Volumes have been written on this and how it is more a measurement of one’s heritable environment. Source: I am a millennial with an above average IQ.
And again…. They tested for more than just IQ. Read the article. Try and understand it.
Maybe instead of insulting others try to understand what is being said here. Both things can be true: that IQ is not a good index to use in this context and that other measurements have shown cognitive decline.
So, it’s a measurement of Gen Z’s heritable environment?
Or their apathy towards IQ tests.
So… when used at a population level rather than at an individual level, and used for comparison between generations from the same place… they’re a good metric?
Good in what sense? Consider that people do better on an IQ test if you offer to pay them more based on their performance. One might conclude that Gen Z values the IQ test than prior generations, or it could be reflective of the environment having more food swamps.
Did… you read the comment? They made a simple statement. They didn’t go beyond that and made no other claims. You’re the one assuming, here.
For real. It’s a fine example of reading while being illiterate.
So true, GenZ user! /s
