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.
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.
Pipe bombs were easily made because of access to things in the kitchen.
And smokes are easy access as are alcohol… Some Kids mark the bottle to hide they were drinking it. Some Kids hide they smoke possibly even today. Reason why there’s incense.
And guns are also easily accessed. Some child related deaths in 80s and 90s in the US because guns weren’t locked up. Now a kid can get one from Walmart and shoot up a school.
But a lot of this can be shit patents with magical thinking that don’t know how to educate their kids and just leave it up to the legal age so the child gets overwhelmed with being an adult magically knowing all the things.
Cuz that doesn’t seem to be a factor here in the discussion.
And that’s an important one.
Maybe a lot of why the political climate is what it is is for one: lazy parenting. Includes not holding people accountable for making decisions they are capable of making for themselves and instead helicopter the shit out of it till lowest denominator kids learn to get away with manipulative shit like “you let me” excuses like you just did.
we done comparing all generations to their lowest common denominator?
Cuz I know not every child is getting up too this shit.
And I know every not child uses this bullshit excuse.
They learned pronouns easy enough. They can hear other words too to gain understanding of what the world is.