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Gen Z first generation since 1800's with lower cognitive performance
- Swizec 8mo agoC-Span video if you prefer that over the written testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U
- TheJCDenton 8mo agoThere's something quietly poetic about a thread on declining cognitive performance where one of the top comment is "here's a video if you don't want to read."
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- stefanfisk 8mo agoAt least it’s not a reaction video. That those are such a widespread phenomenon both frightens and fascinates me.
- saltcured 8mo agoSometimes I think they are a mash-up of three things from older media 1. A laugh track 2. An inset with a sign language interpreter 3. An imaginary friendship with a low budget meta commentator, like Mystery Science Theater 3000
- Swizec 8mo agoBest way I could find to share 2 links :) The video version landed differently for me than the written testimony (it's the same person authoring both). I felt when speaking he emphasized the impact better than it came through in writing.
- NedF 8mo ago[dead]
- casey2 8mo agoI completely reject these policy statements based on the data laid out. Standardized education is failing and doesn't fit the modern world. We need radically individualized education. By 2050 no student in the school system should speak the same language. There is no "correct" way to learn. We need, now more than ever, diversity of thought.
- alex43578 8mo agoThe workforce and country in your proposed system will be pretty dysfunctional if “nobody speaks the same language”. The reality is there’s no single way to learn, but there’s plenty of good-enough ways.
- daymanstep 8mo agoPretty sure he was being ironic. There's no way someone would seriously suggest that every student should speak a completely different language.
- alex43578 8mo agoEven if that’s a metaphor for hyper-personalized education, my point still stands. Society and the labor market benefits from everyone meeting a baseline level of education across certain areas. Ideally, everyone that graduates high school can read and write English at a HS level, perform basic algebra, understand percentages and interest rates, etc. For the purposes of school, there’s no need for “diversity of thought” in the school system - we aren’t even delivering on the basics these days.
- helterskelter 8mo agoI agree with you in principle to an extent, but many would argue that standardized cookie-cutter education produced what gains we had and education policies which tried to accommodate diversity of thought are responsible for the declines due to lack of rigor and any real standards. "Reading by vibes" [1] directly led to declines in literacy, and there are attempts in math to accommodate different styles of thinking which may be undermining rigor there as well. I suspect teachers are caught in a catch-22 of only being able to teach what's on the curriculum and nothing else, so they have no room for flexibility to engage students, while also being under pressure to produce high grades; but when the curriculum is garbage and the students aren't interested...grading standards tend to be what's compromised. The schools and parents are happy their kid has A's, teachers get to keep their jobs, and students may graduate highschool without having ever read a book cover to cover. [2] 1: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-and-fall-of-vibes-based-literacy https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-... 2: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli...
- jmercouris 8mo agoThe article makes some interesting points about the correlation between computer usage in schools and test scores. What I would be interested in is the unmetered computer usage outside of schools. Are students with restricted access to so-called "brain-rot" social media outperforming those with it?
- overtone1000 8mo agoAs a parent of a middle schooler and an elementary schooler, I don't need a formal study to answer that question. I've met my childrens' classmates. Sometimes, anecdotal evidence is sufficient. And, I wish they were using real computers! Unfortunately, they're on tablets.
- steve_adams_86 8mo agoIt's so bizarre to watch. The programmers of tomorrow may actually use iPads and LLMs, or similar. The abstraction from the work being done is increasing rapidly, and understanding of the underlying systems is decreasing. I know it's the way things have been going for decades, but it feels weird.
- marginalia_nu 8mo agoFeels like there's a number of these trend shifts that are hard to explain, that make a fantastic canvas for projecting world views onto. The school performance dip is one, global decline in birth rates another. You see it explained as the result of everything. Be it microplastics, mobile phones, immigrants, long covid, climate change (, stress about), social media, AI, glyphosate, 5G, the elders of zion, the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, something to do with late stage capitalism... everyone seems to have their personal landscape of theories as to why this is happening. You can probably ask someone to enumerate what they think causes this dip, and use it as a pretty reliable embedding for their entire political worldview.
- gurumeditations 8mo agoDon’t need educated citizens for a dictatorship of the elites where you only need to press buttons with a picture of a burger on them because your economy was outsourced to poorer countries
- hackable_sand 8mo agoNot true but go off
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoWTF Happened in 2012? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796039 - January 2026
- Cold_Miserable 8mo agoIdiocracy is the future.
- bodhi_mind 8mo agoExcept it’s the present
- h4kunamata 8mo agoThis!!!!!!
- yial 8mo agoI wouldn’t relate this directly to cognitive performance. But my anecdotal experience working with younger employees / interns has been an uptick in situations where they become “paralyzed” by a fear of making a mistake, coupled with the inability to ask questions / seek out help. They’ll google, or use ai, but if that doesn’t deliver an answer instead of asking a co worker, they will sit on an issue until someone follows up with them. There also seems to be a huge fear of submitting “something” that’s not good enough where the preference seems to be “nothing” if they’re worried it’s not good enough. I notice this in organizations I’ve been in leadership roles, but also have had this expressed to me by a half dozen peers in other organizations.
- epsilonsalts 8mo agoYou all actually going to believe government propagated data? Trump is obviously untrustworthy because he keeps saying the quiet part out loud. The rest of the government obfuscates untrustworthiness and elders love to drag youth as the source of moral decay in our society. We are generally more educated these days though so "look at them eating avocado toast!" and straight up fear mongering won't cut it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105.amp So they resort to unfalsifiable data. You all going to put the work in that would be required to refute this? But if they insist on playing this game, OK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_denial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_deni...
- jajuuka 8mo agoThe data cited are international organizations so they are generally pretty trustworthy. However looking at the data tells a very different story from what this professor is claiming. They are averaging all countries regardless of context. Including countries at war, countries who have inconsistent data, etc. Not to mention all the different educational systems. Looking at each country though the results are fairly consistent from 2000 to 2022.
- epsilonsalts 8mo agoI agree the model is poorly constructed, which is why I concluded American leaders are looking to spread whatever narrative they can to deflect from their own agenda and incompetence.
- 837263292029 8mo agoHe says, citing Wikipedia, lol.
- sieep 8mo agoI'll pay attention when a reliable and trustworthy institution decides to claim this
- bibimsz 8mo ago[flagged]
- jajuuka 8mo agoThis seems like a testimony from a pop-science professor. Credentials seem to mostly point to self-help books and paid speaking events. The first graph in the written testimony show a direct decline in scores with screen time. However the linked data does not show this. Using the US alone scores from 2000 to 2022 have not really moved.[1] They have fluctuated but in those 22 years the score is largely unchanged except in Mathematics where the US has declined. Dr. Horvath links to the 2015 PISA results, but screen time is not a part of that data. I got through the paper to this point and if they already faltering this badly then it's not worth my time to keep reading. Plenty of idiots and misinformed people testify before Congress. That doesn't make their statements empirically true and arguments right. The sad part is the amount of people who will take it as gospel as it already conforms to their biases of children and technology. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#Rankings_comparison_2000–2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...
- h4kunamata 8mo agoThis is world wide, look around us, everything is broken. Early 2000s is when humanity peaked, the technology is making some people dumber. Kids cannot speak and yet have access to tablet. Students cannot study without AI anymore. Teachers saying not even giving them the answer helps, they don't know what to do. If you never watched the movie 2006 Idiocracy, do it!! It was supposed to be a comedy movie but sadly, it describes the world we are living right now.