A leading neuroscientist told US lawmakers Thursday that Generation Z is the least cognitively capable cohort in modern history, blaming excessive screen time and digital shortcuts for eroding attention spans, problem-solving skills and academic performance among those born between 1997 and 2010.
Jared Cooney Horvath, who testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, presented data from 80 countries showing a consistent decline in youth intelligence metrics coinciding with the rollout of digital tools in schools, reversing a century-long upward trend in cognitive abilities.
“A sad fact our generation has to face is that our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. Every generation has outperformed their parents until Gen Z,” Horvath said, drawing on studies revealing Gen Z students scoring lower grades than Millennials and spending over half their waking hours on screens.
He highlighted how the shift to “skimming” content via bullet points and summaries has supplanted deep reading and study, warning: “Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries.”
Horvath decried efforts to adapt education to digital habits as capitulation, adding: “Most of these young people are overconfident about how smart they are. The smarter people think they are, the dumber they actually are.” He urged a return to traditional learning methods to reverse the trend.
The testimony, part of broader hearings on technology’s societal impacts, has sparked debate on whether Gen Z’s tech-savvy masks deeper deficits in critical thinking, with educators worldwide reporting similar patterns in math and literacy scores.
