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.
No but they use these things even with warnings. And certainly use chatgpt where possible to avoid learning despite being warned.(lots of teachers have been very vocal about this). That’s a self made choice even with education about the choice.
kids in previous generations experimented with pipe bombs (which they didn’t invent the idea) and blew off their hands.
These kids were warned not to.
Yet not all kids play with pipe bombs and lose their hands. Hmm. Almost like kids are capable of individually accepting education about the choices they make.
So I guess no, you don’t have to invent the thing to be partial to be compliant if even fully certain in your own demise.
Of course, because that’s what kids do. Kids have ALWAYS done stupid shit against the warnings of their parents/teachers. The difference is adults in the past haven’t usually given kids easy access to dangerous shit. And in the past the parents would normally be shamed for doing the dangerous shit that they tell kids not to do.
Use your example, pipe bombs: are they easily accessible just by reaching over and grabbing one off the kitchen counter? Because that’s how easy it is to grab a cell phone and use AI or TikTok. Do we have Superbowl ads for pipe bombs? Do we have celebrity endorsements for pipe bombs? Do adults happily use pipe bombs on the regular?
Use a different example: smoking or alcohol. While parents will use them both to varying degrees, we as a society have banned kids from doing them. We don’t just leave it up to kids to take our warning that both are bad for them.
All people exist within and help create culture. It’s difficult to resist culture. As a young millennial, social media was everywhere and rapidly became how you interact with people. Many of us got hooked on it or other aspects of the internet. Hell I was reading cracked on my phone in high school after finishing my work instead of reading the book I brought (and yeah getting in trouble for it). It was normal. When I quit Facebook it came with social costs that weren’t intentionally applied, I just didn’t know about things that were happening because they were posted there.
Gen z is more hooked than any previous generation and at a younger age, just like millennials were. But the content has changed from texting peers to browsing the web to doomscrolling to doomscrolling without even needing to read. They bear some responsibility just as we did, but those of us who formed the culture they live in and built these tools also deserve some responsibility, as do the parents who haven’t been raising them to value education as much as ours did and who’ve been providing them with unlimited access to the devices.
I partially agree with you. When i was young, some kids smoked even though the risk was quite clear. As a society, though, we banned kids from buying cigarettes because young people often make bad decisions. it’s not even their fault - it’s a prefrontal cortex thing. we can’t just say, ‘kids were warned’
clarification- when i say it’s not their fault i am referring to them being bad at making decisions. it is partially their fault about smoking, and partially due to them having poor impulse control and an intense need to conform.
I don’t think making pipe bombs is as widely accessible or addictive as using AI, but sure, good analogy