No, it's not just you — people really are, per a number of surveys, way less intelligent than they used to be.
  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
    581·
    16 days ago

    This is what catastrophically losing a class war with the rich and weirdly refusing to talk about it looks like.

    Your intelligence is fine, you are beaten down is the problem.

  • Rooskie91@discuss.online
    321·
    16 days ago

    Yeah I’m not giving that much credence to an article that uses the pop term “brain rot” while trying to make a scientific statement.

    There isn’t any reason to suggest that human intellect has been harmed, the publication counters — but in “both potential and execution,” our intelligence is definitely on the downturn.

    Sounds like they’re trying to glean something from an article that doesn’t support their premise.

    If we’re looking for a cause for people falling into propaganda and supporting self destructive policies, it’s has nothing to do with intellect. It has to do with a perceived sense of vulnerability. People do insane shit when they feel vulnerable. It’s why cults exist.

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
    115·
    16 days ago

    Every generation is more intelligent and connected than the last.

    No corporate media article is going to change that.

    This is laterally just an attempt to make older people think the young are stupid and lame.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    31·
    16 days ago

    A bit sensationalized, but there is a solid evidence that students are doing worse in the US than a few years back. From what I’ve read, it’s probably the year gap from COVID because data suggested the decline was steeply after that year and mostly impacted low income, rural, and communities of color who were most impacted by the shift to remote school.

    This is an averages thing, though, as it’s tied to other data that suggests absenteeism skyrocketed and never quite came back to pre-pandemic levels. A large group of people just not doing education is going to sink the scores.

    Now, people citing biological reasons like long COVID and microplastics aren’t necessarily wrong, but I haven’t seen as much evidence of cognitive impacts. The reason I still give it some credit, though, is historically IQ goes up every generation (and then recalibrated since it’s centered on 100) and a big part of that is physiological (e g. deleading gas, reducing air pollution), though access to information (radio, TV, internet) also contributes.

    Interestingly enough, you’d think reliance on social media makes you dumb but we don’t have evidence of that, it’s mostly just really bad for teens mental health. We’ve always had stupid forms of entertainment.

    • Fluffy Kitty Cat@slrpnk.netEnglish
      51·
      16 days ago

      A lot of students just straight up couldn’t do remote learning because they didn’t have home internet or suitable computing and they got screwed. Attitudes towards sick days also changed and many parents still keep their kids home sick based on now expired COVID rules

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
        31·
        16 days ago

        Yup, hence why it impacted who I mentioned: low income, rural and people of color (who get bad Internet due to racial redlining). Good point regarding changed attitudes of sick days, though.

      • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        15 days ago

        also, shabbling together school online over ~3 months isn’t exactly… smooth to say the least. Teachers can’t pause a YouTube video without hunting for the triangle in the corner, much less operate a computer long enough to share and control a zoom call of 30 kids.

        I literally got a daily 0 for participation in a class where I clicked the “join call” button and was met with like 4 other kids, no teacher. For some reason there was a bug where there were just 2 different calls it would connect you to at random and all the teachers assumed it was kids being lazy and wouldn’t listen to parents.

        Also the teachers had no idea what they were teaching either, they spent all the time learning how to ‘recover the google when they clicked the minus button’ so they couldn’t learn about the English lesson.

        After a month I just switched to my states online classes instead of my highschool pitiful attempts. It went well for the rest of the year. Pretty easy because when you had to do phone calls the teachers were so overworked they’d like literally anything. For my physical education class I submitted a like 30min time for a mile, the teacher didn’t say anything. Took an online class that wasn’t offered at my school this year, it was definitely harder, but still pretty easy.

    • MichaelScotch@lemmy.world
      131·
      16 days ago

      Or… lack of education? Declining quality of education? Micro plastic is a major problem, but to think it’s the #1 cause of people being stupid is, well, pretty stupid.

    • Rogue@feddit.uk
      2·
      16 days ago

      Is there any evidence to suggest micro plastics are causing issues? My conspiracy is microplastics are simply being pushed as the latest scapegoat for society’s issues. It’s an attempt to distract us and redirect us from rising up against the oligarchs who are destroying our society.