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.
This is click bait
Let’s spin the ol’ wheel of rage bait distraction for today, is it gonna be “Gender A has it worse than gender B?” how about a little run on the infinite treadmill of “Celebrity says something controversial?” No no, I see we have “Generational blame for our miserable lives but no actual action or communication to address or fix it” on the menu today.
If your life/job/city sucks, it’s obviously {every human between the age of 16 and 25}'s fault, the only thing you can do to fix it is to spend the rest of your afternoon doomscrolling!
Why would you ever leave your couch?? That will never fix it!
CONSUME MORE SLOP
Not pictured:
The countless millions of people with their own, select worries and concerns and political ideologies each getting their own very special news stories fed directly to their phones or PC’s confirming that their misery is indeed the fault of [PEOPLE THEY HATE] and how even the people who are supposed to be smart are gobbling that slop down like piggies.