Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath stood before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in mid-January and delivered a message that should have stopped the room cold: Gen Z — the cohort born roughly between 1997 and 2010 — has become the first generation since cognitive records began in the late 1800s to score lower than the generation before them.
Lower in attention. Lower in memory. Lower in reading and math skills. Lower in problem-solving abilities. Lower in overall IQ.
This isn’t a minor dip or a statistical blip. This is a full reversal of more than a century of steady cognitive improvement across human populations.
Horvath, a neuroscientist and former teacher who now runs LME Global (a group that shares brain and behavioral research with businesses and schools), told lawmakers the cause wasn’t mysterious. The decline tracked directly with the widespread adoption of digital technology in classrooms — what he calls “EdTech.”
The Timeline: When Things Started Going Sideways
Horvath’s research covered 80 countries and showed a six-decade trend of improving cognitive performance — until around 2010, when scores began to plateau and then decline.
Schools hadn’t fundamentally changed that year. Human biology doesn’t evolve fast enough to explain it. But one thing did shift dramatically: the tools students used to learn.
“Once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly,” Horvath told the Senate.
The data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) supported this. When U.S. states rolled out widespread one-to-one device programs—meaning each student receives their own laptop or tablet—scores often flattened or declined quickly.
Kids using computers for just five hours a day specifically for schoolwork scored noticeably lower than those who rarely or never used tech in class.
The Brain Wasn’t Built for Bullet Points
Horvath’s argument hinges on a biological mismatch. Humans evolved to learn best through real human interaction — face-to-face with teachers and peers, not from screens. The brain is wired for deep study, sustained attention, and the kind of cognitive friction that comes from wrestling with complex ideas over time.
Digital learning tools, by contrast, encourage skimming. Short clips. Bullet-point summaries. Rapid-fire transitions between topics. The same consumption patterns Gen Z uses outside of class on platforms like TikTok have now been imported into the classroom itself.
“What do kids do on computers? They skim,” Horvath said. “So rather than determining what we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool. That’s not progress, that is surrender.”
More than half of a teenager’s waking hours are now spent staring at a screen. The brain’s natural processes for building deep understanding, memory, and focus get disrupted. Not because of poor implementation or inadequate teacher training or the need for better apps — but because the technology itself is fundamentally mismatched with how brains naturally work, grow, and retain information.
The Overconfidence Problem
Horvath told the New York Post that many teens and young adults are unaware of their cognitive struggles. In fact, they’re often proud of their alleged intelligence.
“Most of these young people are overconfident about how smart they are,” he said. “The smarter people think they are, the dumber they actually are.”
This tracks with a broader cultural shift. Gen Z has become so comfortable consuming information through short, attention-escaping sentences and video clips that many schools have given in and now teach in this same manner. The tool dictates the pedagogy, not the other way around.
What the Senate Heard
The January 15 hearing featured multiple education experts, all of whom characterized the decline in Gen Z intelligence as a “societal emergency.” Their recommendations included:
Imposing delays on giving children smartphones
Bringing back flip phones for young children when communication is needed
Taking nationwide action to normalize limits on tech in schools
Considering models like Scandinavia’s EdTech bans
The group urged federal lawmakers to treat this as a crisis requiring immediate intervention—not a trend that will self-correct or a problem that can be solved with better applications.
The Uncomfortable Implications
Horvath’s testimony raises questions that extend well beyond Gen Z. If an entire generation’s cognitive development can be stunted by the tools they use to learn, what happens to the generation after them? What happens when teachers who educate future students are themselves products of this digital learning environment?
The research didn’t examine higher-stakes scenarios, such as whether these cognitive declines affect workplace performance, critical thinking in civic life, or the ability to process complex information in adulthood. But the trajectory isn’t encouraging.
Gen Z is spending more time in school than children did in the 20th century. They’re not lazy. They’re not disengaged. They’re being taught using tools that actively interfere with how their brains are designed to learn.
The truth can wait; people’s feelings sometimes cannot —but in this case, the truth about the decline in Gen Z intelligence has been waiting too long already.