For more than two centuries, a quiet pattern held across the developed world. Each generation of children outperformed their parents on standardized cognitive tests. Scores in reading, math, memory, and general IQ climbed decade after decade. No war, economic collapse, or cultural shift managed to break it.
Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher turned brain researcher, told the US Senate that one generation has reversed that entire pattern, and the reason behind it may not be what most people expect. Dr. Jared presented data to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on January 15 that pointed to a sharp cognitive decline among young people born after 1997. His testimony painted a troubling picture of what happens when human biology collides with digital habits that crept into daily life almost without anyone noticing.
Where Gen Z Fell Short
Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2010, grew up during a period of rapid digital expansion. Smartphones, tablets, and laptops became standard fixtures in homes and classrooms. By most measures, these young people had more access to information than any generation before them. Yet when researchers looked at cognitive test scores, Gen Z performed worse than Millennials across every major metric.
Attention, memory, reading ability, math skills, problem-solving capacity, executive function, and general IQ all declined. Horvath, who directs LME Global and has taught at Harvard and the University of Melbourne, reviewed standardized testing data that stretches back to the late 1800s. Every previous generation had beaten the one before it. Gen Z broke that chain.
What makes this decline even more puzzling is that Gen Z spent more time in formal education than children in earlier decades. More hours in school did not translate into stronger cognitive performance. Something else was working against them, and Horvath believed he knew what it was.
Our Brains Were Never Built for Scrolling
Horvath’s explanation centers on screen time. According to his testimony, more than half of a teenager’s waking hours are now spent staring at a screen. Our brains, shaped by millions of years of evolution, were never built to absorb information from short video clips or condensed summaries. We are social creatures who developed to learn through face-to-face interaction, sustained reading, and deep concentration.
“Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries,” Horvath said.
A student who sits down with a difficult book and works through its arguments builds neural pathways that a five-minute YouTube summary cannot replicate. Screens, Horvath argued, disrupt the biological processes our brains rely on to store information, build understanding, and maintain focus. Even the act of looking at a screen can interfere with how memory forms.
He stressed that better apps or improved software would not fix the problem. It was not a question of design or implementation. In his view, the technology itself, no matter how polished, conflicts with how our brains process and retain knowledge. Millions of years of cognitive wiring cannot be overridden by a decade of software updates.
EdTech in the Classroom Made It Worse
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Horvath pointed to a specific culprit within schools. Educational technology, or EdTech, refers to computers and tablets used as learning tools in classrooms. Over the past two decades, governments around the world invested large sums in putting devices into students’ hands, often giving each child their own laptop or tablet through one-to-one device programs. On paper, it looked like progress. In practice, the results told a different story.
His research, drawn from data across 80 countries over six decades, showed a pattern that repeated itself from one nation to the next. Whenever a country adopted digital technology on a wide scale in its schools, student performance dropped.
“If you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly,” Horvath told lawmakers.
In the United States, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data supported his claim. When states rolled out one-to-one device programs, test scores flattened or fell. Students who used computers for five hours a day for schoolwork alone scored lower than peers who seldom or never used tech in class.
Horvath was clear that this was not an American problem. His data covered nations on every continent, and the pattern was the same everywhere. Digital devices in classrooms went hand in hand with weaker academic performance, regardless of the country’s wealth, culture, or education system.
Around 2010, cognitive abilities among young people began to plateau and, in many areas, to decline. Horvath told senators that schools had not changed much that year, and that human biology evolves far too slowly for genetics to explain the shift. What did change was the flood of screens that entered classrooms and homes in that same period.
Schools Gave In Instead of Pushing Back
Rather than pulling back on screen time, many schools moved in the opposite direction. As students grew more comfortable consuming information in short, fragmented bursts on platforms like TikTok, schools began teaching in that same style. Lesson plans are adapted to match the habits of distracted learners instead of challenging those habits. Horvath saw this as a serious mistake.
“What do kids do on computers? They skim. So rather than determining what do 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,” he warned.
He made clear that his position was not anti-technology. He described himself as “pro-rigor” and called for schools to return to sustained, book-based learning that builds real cognitive strength. Cracking open a book, working through a complex argument, and spending hours wrestling with a single subject are the kinds of activities that wire the brain for deep thinking. None of that happens when a student scrolls through a slide deck and moves on.
Smart in Their Own Eyes, Struggling on Paper
Perhaps the most troubling part of Horvath’s findings involves Gen Z’s self-perception. Many young people in this age group do not realize they are falling behind. A large number of them believe they are smarter than previous generations. Horvath noted an inverse relationship between how intelligent Gen Zers think they are and how they perform on actual tests.
Outside the classroom, daily habits reinforce the problem. Young people scroll through TikTok captions, read plot summaries instead of novels, and absorb information in fragments that vanish from memory almost as fast as they appear. Each of these habits trains the brain to skim rather than think, to consume rather than understand.
When schools mirror these same habits in how they teach, the cycle deepens. Students never build the mental endurance needed for complex reasoning, and they lack the awareness to see what they have lost. Horvath saw in this combination of poor performance and high self-confidence a warning sign that goes beyond test scores. It speaks to a generation that may not have the tools to recognize its own blind spots.
Flip Phones, Fewer Screens, and a Fighting Chance
Education experts who joined Horvath at the January Senate hearing called the situation a “societal emergency.” Several proposals came out of the session. Lawmakers heard recommendations to delay smartphone access for children, bring back basic flip phones for younger kids who need a safety device, and set nationwide limits on how much tech schools can use during instruction.
Some experts pointed to Scandinavia as a model worth following. Several Nordic countries have pulled back on EdTech in classrooms after watching similar declines in student performance play out across their own schools.
Horvath expressed hope that Generation Alpha, the group of children born after Gen Z, could still benefit from a course correction if policymakers and educators act soon enough. Removing screens from classrooms and returning to methods that match how our brains actually learn would be a strong starting point.
His message to Congress was direct. For two hundred years, every generation has gotten smarter than the last. Gen Z reversed that record. And unless schools change direction, the next generation risks following the same downward path.
