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.
Ah I see it’s time for our weekly “You’re miserable because of group-X” rage bait stupid fucking headlines.
I am far more concerned about our adults’ screen time, the people who are supposed to be running our goddamn fucking country are spending all their time scrolling and tweeting for attention and posting rage-bait and getting in trouble for irresponsible internet usage.
At least the kids growing up on the internet right now will have some kind of perspective and understanding how the shit works.
I mean, we still need to do something about algorithmic amplification of our worst feelings and impulses driving waves of insecure people into the arms of grifters and crumbling society broadly, but I want to BAN ADULTS FROM THE INTERNET FIRST.
the ones running the countries are still boomers, and some silent generaiton, plus older gen-xers.
I don’t think this is necessarily the case. If stuff is too abstracted away for people to grasp, they can use it, but don’t really understand it. Like reports of people saying that college kids cannot interact with things like folders. Some of them are so digitally native, that they really lost the understanding of it.
I think it’s both. It’s bad for our future for kids to grow up with extreme body positivity issues and extreme social pressure that never lets up 24/7. It’s bad for our future for kids to see the President tweeting racist videos and violent images. It’s also bad for our present when our President does that.
I’m okay with banning the internet entirely. You need a license and proof that you’re using it for business, and make keyboards illegal.
I think you’ll probably find yourself mostly alone with that opinion.