Generation Z has become the first group since the launch of modern measures of cognitive development to score lower than the previous generation, according to an American neuroscientist, who says the main cause is related to excessive dependence on digital technology in education.
Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher and now neuroscientist, stated that young people born from 1997 to the early 2010s are "stunted in cognitive development" due to the massive use of digital technologies in schools.
According to him, since the end of the 19th century, when data on cognitive development began to be kept, Generation Z is the first to record declines in attention, memory, reading and math skills, problem solving, and intelligence quotient (IQ), compared to their parents.
Speaking before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Horvath stressed that this decline has occurred despite the fact that young people today spend more years in school than children in the 20th century. According to him, the problem lies not with education itself, but with the tools used to learn.
He directly links this lag to the increased use of what is called “educational technology” (EdTech), such as computers and tablets, arguing that the human brain is not built to learn through short videos and quick-sentence summaries.
“More than half of a teenager’s waking hours are spent looking at a screen,” Horvath said. “Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other people and from deep study, not by scrolling through screens with bullet points.”
According to him and other experts who testified before Congress, learning works best through direct human interaction – teachers with students, students with each other – rather than through screens, which interfere with the biological processes that build concentration, memory, and deep understanding.
Horvath emphasized that the problem is not misuse of technology, lack of training, or weaker applications, but the technology's own incompatibility with the way the human brain naturally works.
As director of LME Global, an organization that disseminates research on the brain and behavior, he stated that data shows that cognitive abilities began to stagnate and even decline around 2010. According to him, human biology has not changed quickly enough to be the cause, while schools have essentially remained the same.
“If you look at the data, once countries widely adopt digital technology in schools, performance drops significantly,” he told lawmakers on January 15.
Horvath added that this phenomenon is not limited to the U.S. His studies, which include about 80 countries, show a six-decade trend of worsening learning outcomes the more technology is introduced into classrooms.
In fact, children who use computers for about five hours a day for schoolwork score significantly lower than those who use little or no technology in their learning.
In the US, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that, in states where “one student – one device” programs were implemented, results often stagnated or declined rapidly.
However, Horvath notes that many young people of Generation Z are unaware of these difficulties and are often overconfident about their intelligence.
"A lot of them are overconfident about how smart they think they are. The smarter they think they are, the less smart they turn out to be," he said.
He warned that the way young people consume information through platforms like TikTok – with short sentences and quick videos – has led schools to adapt to this style, rather than challenge it.
“Kids on computers scan, they don't read deeply. Instead of education shaping student behavior, we are reshaping education to fit the tool. This is not progress, it is surrender,” Horvath warned.
At the January session, education experts described the situation as a "social emergency" and recommended delaying the giving of smartphones to children, the return of simple phones for young ages, and broad national restrictions on the use of technology in schools, taking an example from the restrictive policies of Scandinavian countries. /GazetaExpress/
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