For the First Time in Human History, Children’s Generation is Less Intelligent than Their Parents’ Generation - Scientist

Scientists are sounding the alarm: the introduction of digital technologies in schools is catastrophically hindering children's development. As a result, schoolchildren are no longer developing their cognitive abilities; on the contrary, they are dulling them.

The results of an international study covering 80 countries, including the USA, have been summarized. They are dire: members of Generation Z (born from 1997 to the early 2010s) show lower levels of cognitive development compared to their parents.

This has never happened in human history. For centuries, humanity has consistently accumulated knowledge and passed it on to children, which made them more astute than their parents.

What has happened? Where did the breakdown occur? Why did children start to become less intelligent around 2010?

Jared Cooney Horvath — an Australian neurobiologist and specialist in neuroeducation (Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne) — links this to the youth's dependence on digital gadgets.

Here’s what he says:

"Our children are cognitively less developed than we were at their age. Since the late 19th century, we have measured cognitive development, and each generation has surpassed its parents. Much of this was due to school: each subsequent generation spent more time in school, and we used school to develop cognitive abilities. However, this was the case until the advent of Generation Z.

Generation Z is the first generation in modern history that lags behind us in almost all cognitive indicators: from basic attention and memory to literacy, numeracy, executive functions, and even overall intelligence, despite the fact that they spend more time in school than we did.

Why? What happened? The answer lies in the tools we use within schools to organize learning.

If we look at data from 80 countries, as soon as countries widely implement digital technologies in schools, learning outcomes noticeably deteriorate. It reaches the point where children who use computers in school for about 5 hours a day for educational purposes show results MORE THAN TWO-THIRDS of a standard deviation lower than children who rarely or never use technology in school."

But paradoxically, teenagers and young people themselves do not realize that this is a problem. They are confident in their intelligence, proud that they can find answers to any questions in the digital environment in a matter of seconds. They do not understand that the ability to find information and the ability to think are completely different things that have nothing to do with each other. "The smarter they think they are, the dumber they actually are," says Dr. Horvath.

In his opinion (which is shared by all his colleagues), education should prioritize fundamental thinking skills over the ability to use tools. "Teach someone to think, and they will be able to use any tool," explains the neurobiologist. But for that, traditional teaching methods that have been tested for centuries are needed: reading, studying, and independently analyzing long, complex texts, and mandatory handwriting (this process directly affects brain activity, shaping it).

But the modern school is a set of typing on a keyboard and an intentional simplification of the complex. "But the human brain is not adapted to learning based on short videos that can be watched on the internet and reading short sentences that briefly summarize entire books and complex ideas," believes Dr. Horvath.

It is also important not to stare at a monitor for hours, but to engage in live discussions, present arguments, rely on logic, and oppose one’s interlocutor.

"Humans are biologically programmed to learn from each other and to deeply study a topic," says Horvath. But in modern schools, this has practically been eliminated from the learning process.

If nothing changes urgently, the next generation of schoolchildren will be even less intelligent than the current one. And the following generation will be less intelligent than the previous one. And then human history will regress into gradual intellectual decline and degradation.