10 ms·

We are still discovering what lowered the IQ of children born after 1990.

by postalrat 5y ago

j_walter 5y ago
Social media
- anthk 5y ago
  Literally. Social media and multitasking reduces your IQ several points down.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  This is such a populist response but I doubt you have any citations backing that claim. Please post if you do.
  - irrational 5y ago
    The entire Republican party post 2016 would seem to be proof of this assertion.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    https://neurogrow.com/what-social-media-does-to-your-brain/ https://neurogrow.com/what-social-media-does-to-your-brain/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/ For instance, the Internet's digital distractions and supernormal capacities for cognitive offloading seem to create a non‐ideal environment for the refinement of higher cognitive functions in critical periods of children and adolescents’ brain development. Indeed, the first longitudinal studies on this topic have found that adverse attentional effects of digital multi‐tasking are particularly pronounced in early adolescence (even compared to older teens), and that higher frequency of Internet use over 3 years in children is linked with decreased verbal intelligence at follow‐up, along with impeded maturation of both grey and white matter regions.
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      This paper doesn't mention IQ even once. It just discusses general effects it can have e.g. potential problems with multi-tasking for some, possible beneficial effects via increased mental stimulation for the elderly etc. This is quite different than what you initially proposed, not to mention inconclusive.
      - j_walter 5y ago
        What do you think cognitive decline means? IQ tests are also called cognitive assessments and the accurate ones (not the ones you take online) involve a lot of different aspects of assessing how your brain is working. Many psychologists don't like the term IQ because it's too basic of a term...which is why many papers studying the subject do not include it. http://pictonpsychology.com.au/home-2/assessments/cognitive-assessment/ http://pictonpsychology.com.au/home-2/assessments/cognitive-...
  - uoaei 5y ago
    I don't think you are using the word "populist" correctly.
purple_ferret 5y ago
plastics and plastic byproducts
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paulpauper 5y ago
if everything is lowering IQs at all time, wouldn't it just be reflected in the mean then? This would imply that IQ tests would have to get easier over time to keep the average at 100.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  You would still have outliers that raise the mean - mostly children from wealthy people who can afford to raise their children on rural-ish areas, away from environmental pollution (not just lead, but also particulate matter dust/NOx from roads, industrial airborne toxins, and noise).
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    If people in rural area have higher IQs (which I doubt) you'd expect to see a decrease as there's way less people living ruraly today than before.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mitigating 5y ago
      Sometimes it's not how smart you are but if you can utilize that. Many people can't afford higher education, especially from rural areas, there's also stereotypes based on accents and mannerisms that could prevent growth at a company. People in rural areas are also farther away from large companies and may be unable/unwilling to move.
  - handrous 5y ago
    There aren't enough people so rich that they can live in country estates and remote coastal "summer" residences all year (so, neither parent has a job they need to be at) while sending their kids to rural boarding schools to show up in those stats, I expect. Plus you may have trouble pinning down where they actually live most of the time, even if you tried to account for them. Beyond that, given rural areas have been subject to over a century of severe brain-drain and intelligence is fairly heritable, I'd expect that to overwhelm any benefits of country living, if you tried to measure the effect for a general rural population. You'd need a twin study or something like that to sort it all out, i.e. a bunch of twins where one grew up in the country, one in the city or 'burbs or whatever you're comparing it to.
mschuster91 5y ago
If I were to guess, stress is responsible for a large part of it - stress is already known to have side effects in mental health and life expectancy. I mean... my generation (as someone born in 1991), what did we experience in our formative years? Nothing but a perpetual state of crisis: - for Americans, the numerous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and in other countries - not to mention 9/11 itself which hit right as many of my generation were in childhood and old enough to understand what is going on in the news - the financial crisis 2008ff which will leave those who graduated around it with lifetime lower earnings (https://www.pymnts.com/economy/2020/millennials-facing-second-financial-crash/ https://www.pymnts.com/economy/2020/millennials-facing-secon...) - for the Europeans, the Euro crisis not soon after, same effect if not worse, given the devastation it caused in Southern Europe / PIIGS states - for Europeans, dealing with the refugees that all the wars in Africa and Asia caused, culminating in the 2015ff migration crisis - worldwide, anyone not completely ignorant already sees the catastrophic effects of climate change and the utter inaction of our politicians. We see that the world is figuratively speeding with 200 km/h against a rapidly upcoming brick wall, we see that instead of applying the brakes, the 1% of rich and elites instead maxes out the throttle, and we know that we are going to take the beginning of its effects in 30 years and our children face the full impact. Old people complain why the youngest are on strike on Fridays instead of going to school - well, they are aware that no amount of education can help them if the planet is nearing inhabitability! - and on top of that, we have a new crisis looming in the form of Russia destabilizing Western governments by propaganda and cyberwars, and China taking parts right out of the NSDAP playbook and acting like a schoolyard bully in the Pacific region all the way to Australia. - did I already mention that my and the later generations will face significantly less earnings than the generation of Boomers, and that income and wealth inequality also has risen constantly over the last decades? - as a result, home ownership is ever more inachievable, in contrast to our parents we have to regularly be on the move and uproot ourselves (thus, losing our meatspace social network) every couple of years because the only way to achieve wage raises is to move companies - and on top of all of what I mentioned, we have the aftermath of the Covid crisis that showed just how fundamentally broken our societies and economies are, how incompetent and reckless our politicians are, how utterly ignorant politics and society acted when it came to the needs of the young (we sacrificed our youth for the at-risk population, and got rewarded with anti-vaxxers and police smashing outdoor parties as a thank-you), that wrecked entire economies beyond belief and many of us lost people held dearly under sometimes egregious circumstances! All of this is a permanent mental load, in some cases (especially when it comes to Covid) we are crossing into trauma territory. I'm seriously interested in the first psychological research dealing with stress influence of the last two decades.
mfer 5y ago
What is IQ? It's a measure that involves different categories. Some of those categories have seen decline for decades while others have seen an increase. Digging deeper can highlight more detail. Sadly, little of this is documented in easy to find places online.
johanneskanybal 5y ago
You probably meant it as a joke (it was ok) but since half the comments are not: "The change in IQ scores has been approximately three IQ points per decade. One major implications of this trend is that an average individual alive today would have an IQ of 130 by the standards of 1910, placing them higher than 98% of the population at that time." https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence Personally few things triggers me as older generations bashing younger, everything since ww2 has been easier the older you where and they where the ones raising that younger generation. Bit of typical not-getting-it.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  If the world is the most peaceful it's ever been, and people are the smartest they've ever been, what does that mean for land and housing prices in a fiat economy?
- q1w2 5y ago
  I wonder if this has anything to do with the correlative studies that showed that higher IQ individuals have less children on average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence
  - pedrosorio 5y ago
    higher IQ individuals having less children should lead to a decrease of average IQ, whereas the parent cites a reported 3 point increase per decade
    - BatFastard 5y ago
      As much as IQ tests want to say they test raw intelligence, education plays a major role in how well you score. And we are better educated as a society than we were 100 years ago.
      - jVinc 5y ago
vernie 5y ago
Three rolling on the floor laughing emojis.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  You get downvoted, and I understand why (HN does not like most jokes and for good reasons and so on), but I think that was actually a very appropriate reaction. Anyone having spent time on Facebook knows exactly what, and in what way, you meant that.
_ofdw 5y ago
[flagged]
jrootabega 5y ago
Pity the generation whose elderly parents will have been raised on leaded gasoline and whose children will have been raised on smartphones.
guruz 5y ago
My bet is on seed oils :-/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StopEatingSeedOils/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StopEatingSeedOils/ (And also what others posted: plastic, social media etc.)
- creamyhorror 5y ago
  Complicated topic. Canola and corn oil don't seem associated with increased mortality: (Zhang 2021) https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-01961-2 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291... But we have small indications (Ramsden 2013, 2016) that too much linoleic acid (an omega-6 fat) could be detrimental. At the same time, canola and corn oil are rich in it and aren't correlated with higher risk of death in big observational studies. Seed oils are probably not as bad as some fear, given that we don't see increased deaths associated with it in observational studies. But you might as well use olive oil (for more omega-3 fat) instead if you can afford it.

We are still discovering what lowered the IQ of children born after 1990.

j_walter 5y ago

Social media

anthk 5y ago
Literally. Social media and multitasking reduces your IQ several points down.
Tenoke 5y ago
This is such a populist response but I doubt you have any citations backing that claim. Please post if you do.
- irrational 5y ago
  The entire Republican party post 2016 would seem to be proof of this assertion.
- j_walter 5y ago
  https://neurogrow.com/what-social-media-does-to-your-brain/ https://neurogrow.com/what-social-media-does-to-your-brain/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/ For instance, the Internet's digital distractions and supernormal capacities for cognitive offloading seem to create a non‐ideal environment for the refinement of higher cognitive functions in critical periods of children and adolescents’ brain development. Indeed, the first longitudinal studies on this topic have found that adverse attentional effects of digital multi‐tasking are particularly pronounced in early adolescence (even compared to older teens), and that higher frequency of Internet use over 3 years in children is linked with decreased verbal intelligence at follow‐up, along with impeded maturation of both grey and white matter regions.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    This paper doesn't mention IQ even once. It just discusses general effects it can have e.g. potential problems with multi-tasking for some, possible beneficial effects via increased mental stimulation for the elderly etc. This is quite different than what you initially proposed, not to mention inconclusive.
    - j_walter 5y ago
      What do you think cognitive decline means? IQ tests are also called cognitive assessments and the accurate ones (not the ones you take online) involve a lot of different aspects of assessing how your brain is working. Many psychologists don't like the term IQ because it's too basic of a term...which is why many papers studying the subject do not include it. http://pictonpsychology.com.au/home-2/assessments/cognitive-assessment/ http://pictonpsychology.com.au/home-2/assessments/cognitive-...
- uoaei 5y ago
  I don't think you are using the word "populist" correctly.

purple_ferret 5y ago

plastics and plastic byproducts

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

paulpauper 5y ago

if everything is lowering IQs at all time, wouldn't it just be reflected in the mean then? This would imply that IQ tests would have to get easier over time to keep the average at 100.

mschuster91 5y ago
You would still have outliers that raise the mean - mostly children from wealthy people who can afford to raise their children on rural-ish areas, away from environmental pollution (not just lead, but also particulate matter dust/NOx from roads, industrial airborne toxins, and noise).
- Tenoke 5y ago
  If people in rural area have higher IQs (which I doubt) you'd expect to see a decrease as there's way less people living ruraly today than before.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mitigating 5y ago
    Sometimes it's not how smart you are but if you can utilize that. Many people can't afford higher education, especially from rural areas, there's also stereotypes based on accents and mannerisms that could prevent growth at a company. People in rural areas are also farther away from large companies and may be unable/unwilling to move.
- handrous 5y ago
  There aren't enough people so rich that they can live in country estates and remote coastal "summer" residences all year (so, neither parent has a job they need to be at) while sending their kids to rural boarding schools to show up in those stats, I expect. Plus you may have trouble pinning down where they actually live most of the time, even if you tried to account for them. Beyond that, given rural areas have been subject to over a century of severe brain-drain and intelligence is fairly heritable, I'd expect that to overwhelm any benefits of country living, if you tried to measure the effect for a general rural population. You'd need a twin study or something like that to sort it all out, i.e. a bunch of twins where one grew up in the country, one in the city or 'burbs or whatever you're comparing it to.

mschuster91 5y ago

If I were to guess, stress is responsible for a large part of it - stress is already known to have side effects in mental health and life expectancy. I mean... my generation (as someone born in 1991), what did we experience in our formative years? Nothing but a perpetual state of crisis: - for Americans, the numerous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and in other countries - not to mention 9/11 itself which hit right as many of my generation were in childhood and old enough to understand what is going on in the news - the financial crisis 2008ff which will leave those who graduated around it with lifetime lower earnings (https://www.pymnts.com/economy/2020/millennials-facing-second-financial-crash/ https://www.pymnts.com/economy/2020/millennials-facing-secon...) - for the Europeans, the Euro crisis not soon after, same effect if not worse, given the devastation it caused in Southern Europe / PIIGS states - for Europeans, dealing with the refugees that all the wars in Africa and Asia caused, culminating in the 2015ff migration crisis - worldwide, anyone not completely ignorant already sees the catastrophic effects of climate change and the utter inaction of our politicians. We see that the world is figuratively speeding with 200 km/h against a rapidly upcoming brick wall, we see that instead of applying the brakes, the 1% of rich and elites instead maxes out the throttle, and we know that we are going to take the beginning of its effects in 30 years and our children face the full impact. Old people complain why the youngest are on strike on Fridays instead of going to school - well, they are aware that no amount of education can help them if the planet is nearing inhabitability! - and on top of that, we have a new crisis looming in the form of Russia destabilizing Western governments by propaganda and cyberwars, and China taking parts right out of the NSDAP playbook and acting like a schoolyard bully in the Pacific region all the way to Australia. - did I already mention that my and the later generations will face significantly less earnings than the generation of Boomers, and that income and wealth inequality also has risen constantly over the last decades? - as a result, home ownership is ever more inachievable, in contrast to our parents we have to regularly be on the move and uproot ourselves (thus, losing our meatspace social network) every couple of years because the only way to achieve wage raises is to move companies - and on top of all of what I mentioned, we have the aftermath of the Covid crisis that showed just how fundamentally broken our societies and economies are, how incompetent and reckless our politicians are, how utterly ignorant politics and society acted when it came to the needs of the young (we sacrificed our youth for the at-risk population, and got rewarded with anti-vaxxers and police smashing outdoor parties as a thank-you), that wrecked entire economies beyond belief and many of us lost people held dearly under sometimes egregious circumstances! All of this is a permanent mental load, in some cases (especially when it comes to Covid) we are crossing into trauma territory. I'm seriously interested in the first psychological research dealing with stress influence of the last two decades.

mfer 5y ago

What is IQ? It's a measure that involves different categories. Some of those categories have seen decline for decades while others have seen an increase. Digging deeper can highlight more detail. Sadly, little of this is documented in easy to find places online.

johanneskanybal 5y ago

You probably meant it as a joke (it was ok) but since half the comments are not: "The change in IQ scores has been approximately three IQ points per decade. One major implications of this trend is that an average individual alive today would have an IQ of 130 by the standards of 1910, placing them higher than 98% of the population at that time." https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence Personally few things triggers me as older generations bashing younger, everything since ww2 has been easier the older you where and they where the ones raising that younger generation. Bit of typical not-getting-it.

beamatronic 5y ago
If the world is the most peaceful it's ever been, and people are the smartest they've ever been, what does that mean for land and housing prices in a fiat economy?
q1w2 5y ago
I wonder if this has anything to do with the correlative studies that showed that higher IQ individuals have less children on average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  higher IQ individuals having less children should lead to a decrease of average IQ, whereas the parent cites a reported 3 point increase per decade
  - BatFastard 5y ago
    As much as IQ tests want to say they test raw intelligence, education plays a major role in how well you score. And we are better educated as a society than we were 100 years ago.
    - jVinc 5y ago

vernie 5y ago

Three rolling on the floor laughing emojis.

anyfoo 5y ago
You get downvoted, and I understand why (HN does not like most jokes and for good reasons and so on), but I think that was actually a very appropriate reaction. Anyone having spent time on Facebook knows exactly what, and in what way, you meant that.

_ofdw 5y ago

[flagged]

jrootabega 5y ago

Pity the generation whose elderly parents will have been raised on leaded gasoline and whose children will have been raised on smartphones.

guruz 5y ago

My bet is on seed oils :-/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StopEatingSeedOils/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StopEatingSeedOils/ (And also what others posted: plastic, social media etc.)

creamyhorror 5y ago
Complicated topic. Canola and corn oil don't seem associated with increased mortality: (Zhang 2021) https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-01961-2 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291... But we have small indications (Ramsden 2013, 2016) that too much linoleic acid (an omega-6 fat) could be detrimental. At the same time, canola and corn oil are rich in it and aren't correlated with higher risk of death in big observational studies. Seed oils are probably not as bad as some fear, given that we don't see increased deaths associated with it in observational studies. But you might as well use olive oil (for more omega-3 fat) instead if you can afford it.