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.
I wonder if just a larger percentage of Gen Z thinks standardized testing is bullshit and don’t even try. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe the internet has been a greater evil than benefit to the world, and also believe cell phones have done serious damage to attention spans and focus. That is to say, I’m firmly at the “get off my lawn you damn kids” stage of life. But at the same time I admire so much of the younger generations that don’t buy into the “work hard and it pays off” bullshit that I was raised with.