Born 1997–2010: Report Says Gen Z Is the Least Intelligent Generation Yet

A new international report has delivered a shocking verdict: people born between 1997 and 2010 — known as Generation Z — have lower intelligence levels than all generations before them. The study, led by neuroscientist and education expert Jared Cooney Horvath, says Gen Z is struggling mentally because of heavy dependence on technology. Speaking before the United States Senate earlier this year, Horvath said young people today have weaker attention spans, poor problem-solving skills, and lower reading and maths abilities compared to older generations.

“Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age,” Horvath said. “Every generation used to be smarter than the one before it — until Gen Z.” He said many young people think they are very intelligent, yet the evidence shows the opposite. “Most of these young people are overconfident about how smart they are.

The more intelligent they think they are, the less intelligent they actually are,” he said. According to the report, Gen Z students score lower academic grades than Millennials, who came before them. Horvath blamed excessive screen time, saying teenagers now spend more than half of their waking hours staring at phones, tablets, and laptops instead of reading deeply, thinking critically, or interacting face to face.

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“Humans are designed to learn from other humans and from deep thinking, not from flipping through screens for quick summaries,” he said. He warned that digital learning has turned students into “skimmers” — people who glance at information but do not truly understand it. “What we are calling modern education is actually surrender,” Horvath said.

“We are changing education to suit machines instead of training minds.” The report says this decline in intelligence is not just happening in one country. Data from over 80 countries shows that when schools widely adopt digital technology, student performance drops sharply. “In every country where technology becomes the main learning tool, academic results fall,” Horvath said.

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