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 have read the article. While yes, most of it is neutral and factual, the opening paragraph colours all of it towards a certain message by saying “Gen Z has managed to”, implying Gen Z is responsible for it - which it most definitely isn’t, we are nowhere near being decision makers today, let alone 10-20 years ago when we were meant to learn and develop these skills.
I am a teacher, and also part of Gen Z. Believe it or not, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone more in favour of restricting access to social media for kids or raising standards than me; the fact of the matter is, however, that we didn’t cause these problems. It’s not like we are happy about this either.