[Image: Flickr]
No, you’re not imagining it; people really are getting dumber.
According to the Financial Times, cognitive skills across all age groups are tanking. We’re talking attention spans shot to hell, problem-solving skills circling the drain, and reasoning abilities that would make a goldfish look like a philosopher.
The very essence of intelligence (whatever that even means anymore) is slipping through our collective fingers.
And no, you can’t just blame COVID. Sure, the pandemic threw a wrench into education, but the decline has been happening since at least the mid-2010s, suggesting that whatever is going on runs much deeper and has lasted far longer than the pandemic.
The real kicker is that benchmarking tests, like the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study and the global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), have been screaming about this for years. Teens and young adults are struggling to focus, think critically, and process information.
So, what’s killing our brains? The obvious suspect is the slow death of reading. In 2022, only 37.6% of Americans had read a novel or short story in the past year. That’s a steady drop from 41.5% in 2017 and 45.2% in 2012.
Reading levels in South Africa are also pretty shot. In 2021, a concerning 81% of South African Grade 4 learners struggled to read for meaning, a significant decline from 78% in 2016, according to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). A report on the literacy crisis from 2023 also noted that while fewer primary school children can read for meaning now than before the COVID pandemic, most children entering grade two do not know the alphabet.
Meanwhile, mind-numbing doomscrolling is at an all-time high, and, surprise, surprise, our ability to process numbers is plummeting too. In 2023, 34% of American adults scored at the lowest levels of numeracy. A year earlier, it was 29%. That’s a five-point spike in functional mathematical illiteracy in just 12 months.
But it’s not just about reading less or sucking at math. The way we consume and interact with information is shifting, and not in a good way.
Research shows that excessive screen time messes with verbal skills in kids, wrecks college students’ ability to concentrate, and generally turns brains to mush.
The good news? Human intelligence itself hasn’t eroded—at least, not biologically. But when it comes to actually using our brains? Yeah, we’re on a downward spiral.
Looks like you’re going to have to read way more if you don’t want to become dumb, dumber and dumberer.
[Source: Futurism]
