Recent research appears to confirm what many older people have been noticing for years: Younger generations are falling behind on cognitive skills. Measured IQs are dropping, and abilities like verbal fluency and nonverbal reasoning are declining as well.
If we’re going to reverse this decline in the young, parents and older adults are going to have to do what you might call “re-parenting.” We’re going to have to teach young people some basic skills.
Thank God for Mrs. McGonnigle. She sat with me during lunch for an entire week doing flash cards until I had my times tables burned into my brain.
These are skills that we largely seem to have absorbed by osmosis in our youths. For a number of reasons, these younger generations haven’t.
Digital deprivation
It’s not that kids are being born with fewer “hard-wired” smarts than before; it’s not that raw intelligence at birth is declining. Instead, it looks environmental, and the biggest culprit appears to be the “the rapid integration of digital technology into education.”
Bioinformatics researcher Shibasis Rath does a good job of putting complicated studies into plain English in his article “Is Gen Z the first generation less intelligent than their parents?”
The research in both Europe and the U.S. finds that younger generations show noticeable declines in their ability to reason abstractly, to solve novel problems on their own, and to engage in numerical/mathematical reasoning.
As Rath writes:
A large analysis of nearly 400,000 American adults tested between 2006 and 2018 found declines in verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, and matrix reasoning — key markers of fluid intelligence, or the ability to solve novel problems. Spatial reasoning showed modest improvement, but overall composite scores fell, with the sharpest declines among young adults aged 18 to 22.
What does the research suggest is the biggest culprit? Anyone who has watched a smartphone generation struggle with basic tasks will not be surprised.
Those interested in digging into the data can read some pertinent studies here and also here. To summarize, research on intelligence, measured by IQ and other tests, used to find a consistent upward trend over time. This is called the “Flynn Effect.”
From the 1930s to about 2000, researchers found IQs and mental skills rising in each subsequent generation. But then it flattened out. Worse, though, the curve started to decline around 2010; this was just a few years after the introduction of the smartphone.
Many people remarked that giving young people phones that let them outsource their thinking to a machine would lead nowhere good. But the pushback was, and is, loud and boisterous. Those who made such warnings were called “Luddites” and “Boomers.”
Math muddle
Well, it did happen. Think about how you’ve noticed that younger people are confused about how to deal with cash at stores. If they key in the wrong amount, they don’t know how to make change. This means they can’t do the simple arithmetic in their heads that people my age (51) and thereabouts do automatically. They don’t even know how to do simple subtraction on paper, because schools teach “new math.”
If you want to go down a nightmare rabbit hole of what public school math instruction looks like, start here.
This problem with math is mirrored in the ways reading is taught today, like using the discredited “whole language” approach instead of phonics. The series “Sold a Story” tells the tale in a compelling way.
If you still don’t believe today’s young people are floundering and adrift without basic skills, check out this demonstration from a college classroom. Before you watch this short video, understand that it’s not from a bottom-tier community college. These are Duke University students who have no idea which direction is north and who struggle, and fail, to read a simple road map.
The professor in that video is fighting the good fight with humor as he tries to skill-up his college students with the kind of knowledge older generations had by third or fourth grade. But he can’t do it alone. Teachers can’t do it alone, because the problem doesn’t start at school — it starts at home.
Phoning it in
It starts with parental mistakes. Not malice, not abuse, just honest mistakes. This is hard for parents to hear. Heck, it’s hard in 2026 for anyone to hear that they made a mistake or made the wrong choice. But we have to face the truth if we’re going to do better by our kids.
The first and biggest mistake was giving children smartphones at all. And no, they don’t “need” them. If a child needs to be able to call his parents wherever he is, a flip phone will do that without the collateral damage of instant access to violence and pornography right in Johnny’s pocket.
But it’s not just the obscene and damaging internet content that’s the problem. It’s deeper. When Johnny has a GPS system, a calculator, an AI “write my email” program in his hands, he’s going to use them instead of his brain.
So what are we to do? It’s time to be “old-fashioned” again. Wise parents will put their youngsters back in time and take away the digital crutches that have stunted their growth.
1. How to be bored
Take that smartphone away. No child 16 or under should have a smartphone. If you’re not willing to do this, close this tab and stop reading, because you’ve already decided you’re not going to help your kid grow. Yes, other kids, and other parents, will point out to your kid that “you’re the only one who doesn’t have one.” This is an excellent opportunity to impart that timeless parental wisdom: “If every kid jumped off a bridge …”
For Gen X kids, boredom was the training ground of childhood — the quiet stretch of time that forced you to invent games, pick up a book, wander outside, or simply learn how to be alone with your own thoughts.
2. How to read a map
Buy your child a map of your city, and then expand to an atlas of your state. Sit down and show your kid how to read the map’s instructions (the legend that explains symbols), and plot out the route from your house to your kid’s school. Then have your child plot a route from his school to whatever his favorite destination in town might be. This has to be done by hand, writing down steps by hand, on real paper. Yes, it matters. No, typing doesn’t form the same neural connections. Then keep going to more complicated routes.
3. How to memorize math facts with flash cards
Does your daughter struggle with math? Does she have a hard time with arithmetic? It’s time for flash cards.
In third grade, I was the only kid in class who struggled to memorize his multiplication tables. Thank God for Mrs. McGonnigle. She sat with me during lunch for an entire week doing flash cards until I had my times tables burned into my brain. This kind of rote memorization is the nonnegotiable, must-have building block for moving on to long division, algebra, and more.
4. How to get places without a chauffeur
This one’s easy, and it will save you time: Stop driving your kid to school and everywhere else he wants to go. If school is a mile away, he can walk. I did, and most of you reading did too.
No, it’s not true that it’s “mostly too dangerous in these modern times.” That’s only true in some areas, but even parents in safe neighborhoods have fallen prey to hysteria; they won’t even let their kids ride bikes until sunset. Reverse that.
5. How to cook
Teach them basic cooking.
Not by directing them to a website with GPS-style “turn-by-turn” steps and directions — by showing them and getting them to put their hands on the mixing bowl and the stove along with you. You don’t need detailed recipes to teach basic cooking like pasta, grilled sandwiches, meat loaf, and other home staples.
Gen Z thinks DoorDash is “how food happens.” Teaching them kitchen skills will give them better physical health, it will save them money, and it will show them how much more affordable (and tasty) food can be. If you need a reference cookbook, I recommend the “Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook” (a 1980s version if you can find it). The book explains basic techniques in food preparation that make sense and all fit together.
RELATED: Cooking is easy; it’s our modern anxiety that makes it hard
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Parents: I know it’s not easy. You’re swimming against a huge cultural and commercial tide that wants to swallow your kids’ minds and money. Tech companies don’t want to improve your kids’ quality of life — they want them dumbed down and dependent, and they’re doing a very fine job. Only you can stop this.
It will be lonely for a lot of you. Other parents will think you’re that kooky, crunchy mom or the too-strict dad. All your kids’ friends will poke fun if your daughter doesn’t have an iPhone. Yes, I’m afraid those things will happen.
But so what? You can handle this. Yes, you can. You know you can, because you know that you did when you were growing up.
You can turn this into a lesson for your children too. Model good responses for them. Be confident in how you let silly jabs roll off your back. Explain that there’s value and confidence in knowing how to help yourself. Yeah, your kids will roll their eyes a few times. But in 10 or 15 years, they’ll say, “Thanks, Mom and Dad.”
Lifestyle, How-to, Culture, Skills, Maps, Flash cards, Parenting, Boredom, Big tech, Intervention
