Studies and national assessments point to declines in reasoning, literacy and academic performance among younger Americans, while researchers debate the roles of smartphones, classroom technology, social-emotional curricula and other environmental changes.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Generation Z is showing measurable declines across several cognitive, academic and physical benchmarks, according to research and testing data cited in a new report examining changes in intelligence scores, reading ability, mathematical reasoning and school performance.
The findings, detailed in a Gateway Pundit report, point to a reversal of a decades-long trend in which each generation generally scored higher than the one before it on intelligence tests.
That historic rise was known as the Flynn Effect, named for New Zealand researcher James Flynn. For much of the 20th century, average IQ scores in developed nations increased by roughly three points per decade, with researchers commonly attributing the gains to improvements in schooling, nutrition, public health and living conditions.
Recent studies suggest that trend has stalled or reversed, with the strongest declines appearing among younger cohorts, including those born between 1997 and 2012.
A major piece of evidence comes from a 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Norwegian economists Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research at the University of Oslo. The study examined cognitive ability scores from military conscription data covering more than 730,000 Norwegian men born between 1962 and 1991.
The researchers found that IQ scores peaked among men born in 1975 and declined by about 0.2 points per year afterward. One of their most important findings was that the decline appeared within families, with younger brothers scoring lower than older brothers, making genetic selection or immigration less likely explanations.
“Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused,” the researchers concluded.
A 2023 study found a reverse Flynn Effect in the United States, with declining performance in matrix reasoning, letter and number series, and verbal reasoning. The steepest declines were found among adults ages 18 to 22.
Military testing data from several countries show similar patterns. According to an analysis drawing on tests from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Australia, declines began around the mid-1990s, before smartphones and social media became dominant. That timing suggests screens may have intensified an existing trend rather than created it alone.
Across those analyses, the aggregate decline is estimated at about 2 to 5 IQ points compared with peak cohorts.
Standardized testing data also show academic setbacks. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s PISA 2022 assessment recorded the largest single-cycle drop in math performance in the program’s 23-year history. Across OECD countries, math scores fell by about 15 points, roughly equivalent to three-quarters of a school year.
Reading scores dropped 10 points, and science scores fell by comparable amounts. The OECD noted that declines in reading and science were already visible before the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning the downward trend began before the disruptions of 2020.
In the United States, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, released 2024 results for 12th graders in September 2025. The results covered students tested between January and March 2024.
Math and reading scores each fell three percentage points from 2019. Only 22% of high school seniors reached proficiency in math, down from 24%, while 35% reached proficiency in reading, down from 37%.
A record-high share of the Class of 2024 scored at the “below basic” level in both subjects compared with all previous assessments.
“Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows, continued declines that began more than a decade ago. My predecessor warned of this trend, and her predecessor warned of this trend as well,” Acting Commissioner Matthew Soldner said.
Compared with the first 12th-grade NAEP reading assessment in 1992, the 2024 average score was 10 points lower.
The reading problem has extended into college classrooms. Pepperdine University professor Jessica Hooten Wilson said some students arrive unable to work through assigned texts.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Wilson told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”
According to the submitted report, nearly half of Americans did not read a single book in 2025, and the habit has fallen by about 40% over the last decade. Americans ages 18 to 29 read an average of just 5.8 books in 2025, the lowest level among surveyed generations.
Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath offered one explanation in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in January 2026. He said Gen Z has spent more time in formal schooling than any earlier generation, but its cognitive capability has declined.
Horvath attributed the pattern partly to classrooms and learning environments increasingly built around screens, condensed material and short-form video. He said those formats train students for speed, stimulation and novelty rather than sustained reasoning.
The timing of the decline overlaps with the mass adoption of smartphones and education technology in classrooms. U.S. schools spent roughly $30 billion on education technology in 2024, about 10 times what they spent on textbooks that year.
A February 2025 Microsoft study found that use of artificial intelligence was associated with weaker judgment and critical-thinking skills, a pattern Mary Burns, co-author of a Brookings Institution study, described as “cognitive offloading.”
The report also points to several institutional changes that overlap with the period of declining scores, including the expansion of the Department of Education, the replacement of textbooks with education technology and the rise of social-emotional learning programs. The report notes that no peer-reviewed study proves those factors caused the decline, but argues that major interventions have coincided with flat or falling performance despite higher spending.
The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980 with a $14 billion budget. By 2024, its budget had reached $238 billion, a 1,600% increase. Over the same period, inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending rose 154%, while reading scores rose only 3% and math scores rose 7%.
Stanford economist Eric Hanushek, reviewing decades of evidence, found little consistent relationship between school resources and student achievement.
At the same time, schools expanded their reliance on technology. By 2024, U.S. schools were spending far more on EdTech than on textbooks, while test scores and cognitive indicators continued to decline. Horvath told the U.S. Senate that screen-heavy learning conditions favor fast interaction over deep reasoning.
Social-Emotional Learning programs also expanded rapidly. By the 2023-24 school year, 83% of U.S. schools were using SEL curricula, up from 46% in 2017-18. Those programs can take between 10 and 90 minutes of instructional time per session, according to the submitted report.
Some liberal think tanks and education analysts argue the results are mixed rather than uniformly negative, pointing to areas where younger Americans may show stronger environmental awareness, social inclusion and digital fluency. Critics respond that those strengths do not replace foundational skills such as reading comprehension, mathematical reasoning, logic, writing and physical fitness.
The debate now centers on what caused the reversal and how quickly it can be corrected. Researchers cited in the report generally point to environmental explanations rather than genetics, with possible factors including screen use, changes in schooling, reduced reading, altered classroom priorities, artificial intelligence tools and the displacement of deep-focus activities.
The data do not support a single simple cause. But across IQ research, international testing, U.S. national assessments and college reading reports, the same broad warning appears: younger Americans are entering adulthood with weaker measured performance in several core academic and cognitive areas than previous cohorts.
That trend is likely to intensify calls for schools and policymakers to reduce screen dependence, restore serious reading and math instruction, reexamine classroom technology, and focus again on the basic skills needed for college, work and civic life.
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