>Is that so? From where I sit, it doesn’t seem access to the world’s information has been a factor in how “smart” people are at all. So there are other factors

>Is that so? From where I sit, it doesn’t seem access to the world’s information has been a factor in how “smart” people are at all. So there are other factors other than 'smart' like blood pressure, stress, distraction, addictions. I'm not saying mobile phones have not come without troubles. 50 years ago the 'smart' people were your jeopardy folks who had tons of facts memorized. You can just google all those things instead and be just as smart. It is a reality that today someone with a cellphone is tremendously smarter. Better yet, simply having advanced science our facts are even better. >Slight aside, can you look up a single education metric improving since the creation of the Dept of Education? When the movie idiocracy came out it was common to show this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect Not even taking cellphones into effect people are tremendously smarter today. You're also probably seeking: https://www.oecd.org/education/ https://www.oecd.org/education/ where they track these things. They've expanded to other stuff that I don't necessarily agree with but to each their own.