Human intelligence is in decline

[Alejo]

I came across this article during my nightly news article that I found interesting and worth sharing, specially with the timing of it, and the rise of wokeness.

While attention focused on the role of educational disruptions associated with the pandemic, research shows that deterioration in cognitive performance has been occurring since 2015.

Human intellectual abilities, such as reasoning, information processing and problem solving, across all age groups are declining, possibly due to increased exposure to visual media, reports the Financial Times.

According to the report, human intelligence appears to have peaked in the early 2010s and has been in decline ever since. These findings come from benchmark tests that have assessed cognitive skills in adolescents and young adults.

Studies such as the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future, which documents the concentration difficulties of 18-year-old Americans, and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the learning skills of 15-year-olds around the world, suggest that young people's attention spans are shrinking and their critical thinking skills are weakening.

While attention focused on the role of educational disruptions associated with the covid-19 pandemic, research shows that the decline in cognitive performance has been occurring since 2015. According to PISA results, performance in reading, mathematics and science peaked around 2012 and, in many cases, fell more between 2012 and 2018 than during the years affected by the pandemic.

Moreover, the problem is not just limited to adolescents - adult skills also show comparable declines across all age groups, with declines in problem-solving skills, attention and core mathematical competencies, according to data from last year's Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Assessment of Adult Skills.

While the Monitoring the Future study shows that the proportion of students in the final year of secondary school experiencing difficulties in thinking, concentrating or learning new things began to increase rapidly in the mid-2010s.

Rise of smartphones and social media

The article suggests that the dramatic decline in reading and the change in the way we consume information are key indicators for the increase in the loss of cognitive skills, influenced by the rise of smartphones and social media.

While active and purposeful use of digital technologies is often positive, passively consuming content on social networks, as well as constantly switching contexts, has been shown to negatively affect attention span, memory and self-regulation. As a result, users have difficulty interacting with long-form content, whether in reading, discussion or problem solving.

 

[irjO]

I think without any study, with just going on social media, for example X or Facebook, you can notice that right away.
At this point it seems could be kinda difficult to get surprised by it, but I’m still getting surprised almost every day.
And I’m not saying this about complex topics or things that could be normal if someone ignores o things like that, but I’m referring to very basic knowledge and their thinking process they go through to defend or clarify their responses/ideas.

 

[loreta]

I came across this article during my nightly news article that I found interesting and worth sharing, specially with the timing of it, and the rise of wokeness.

Absolutely. I agree totally. I see this problem around me, and it is dramatic.
And then it's hard to find someone to have a sensible conversation with. Sometimes an elderly person, and in my opinion, an elderly person is more interesting to talk to than the rest. But the rest, the people I spend time with, are incapable of discussing serious matters, incapable of reasoning, of expressing their ideas, and incapable of listening. On the subject of Putin, they only know how to repeat the nonsense on TV, the propaganda. In fact, the pandemic has not only succeeded in making them crazier, but also more ignorant, more fearful, more sheepish. But all this, despite everything, suits the powers that be because ignorant people, people who don't read, who aren't curious, who are addicted to propaganda, are a gift from heaven, for them.

Why don't people read good books anymore? Reading requires concentration, silence, willpower, a taste for learning about oneself and others, and for exercising the imagination. For most people, it's better and easier to binge-watch series, one after the other, like eating junk food.

Of course, this article isn't about us, people like us who reflect on what's happening, who read, who aren't addicted to TV or social media.

It's interesting to see how badly people don't know how to count, for example. You go to a store and the machine tells the employee how much money to hand over. Everywhere, machines decide for us. We've reached that point.

We, who are no better but a little different, must face all this with compassion and curiosity, as if we were Persians, à la Montesquieu. And continue to read, reflect, and evolve, despite all this.

 

[Jefferson]

This phenomenon is most definitely seen first-hand by us involved with education of young adults. They don't read anymore basically, and the distractions they face are enormous. Much more could be expected from them back in the day, for example in 2010, than now in 2025.