Is Gen Z the First Generation Less Intelligent Than Their Parents?

Gen Z intelligence decline is emerging as a serious concern among neuroscientists and education researchers. For over a century, each generation showed rising IQ scores, a pattern known as the Flynn effect. New data from the U.S., Europe, and global assessments now suggest this trend may be reversing raising urgent questions about how modern environments are shaping the developing brain.

In January 2026, a U.S. Senate hearing delivered a startling claim. Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testified that Generation Z those born roughly between 1997 and 2012 may be the first generation in modern history to show lower cognitive performance than their parents at the same age. According to Horvath, this decline is not anecdotal or cultural pessimism; it is measurable across IQ, memory, literacy, numeracy, attention, and problem-solving abilities.

For more than a century, human intelligence appeared to move in only one direction: upward. Now, multiple datasets from across the globe suggest that this long-standing trend has stalled—or even reversed. Researchers call this phenomenon the reverse Flynn effect, and its implications could shape education, innovation, and society for decades to come.

The Rise and Reversal of the Flynn Effect

The Flynn effect, named after psychologist James Flynn, describes the steady rise in average IQ scores throughout the 20th century. From the 1930s onward, many countries saw gains of roughly three IQ points per decade. Improved nutrition, longer schooling, smaller family sizes, and exposure to increasingly complex environments all played a role. Importantly, these gains were environmental, not genetic.

Children became better at abstract reasoning, pattern recognition, and problem-solving the very skills IQ tests measure. As a result, IQ tests had to be renormalized regularly to prevent score inflation.

However, around the late 1990s and early 2000s, the upward curve flattened. In countries such as Norway, Denmark, and Finland, IQ scores began to decline among cohorts born after the mid-1970s. By the 2010s, similar patterns emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, and parts of Western Europe.

One of the most influential findings came from a large Norwegian study involving over 730,000 men. It showed a drop of roughly seven IQ points per generation among younger cohorts. Crucially, the decline occurred even among siblings raised in the same families, strongly implicating environmental factors rather than genetics.

graph of rise and fall of the flynn effect

Evidence from the United States and Beyond

U.S. data mirror these international trends. A large analysis of nearly 400,000 American adults tested between 2006 and 2018 found declines in verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, and matrix reasoning—key markers of fluid intelligence, or the ability to solve novel problems. Spatial reasoning showed modest improvement, but overall composite scores fell, with the sharpest declines among young adults aged 18 to 22.

International assessments such as PISA reveal similar patterns. Despite spending more years in formal education than any previous generation, today’s adolescents and young adults often perform worse than millennials on measures of reading comprehension, sustained attention, working memory, executive function, and mathematical reasoning.

Some researchers caution against alarmism, arguing that intelligence may simply be plateauing or that IQ tests fail to capture modern cognitive skills. Yet the consistency of declines across countries, test formats, and age groups makes the trend difficult to dismiss as mere measurement error or cultural bias.

Gen Z and the Role of Screens

Dr. Horvath and others point to a major environmental shift that coincides closely with the cognitive downturn: the rapid integration of digital technology into education.

Around 2010, laptops, tablets, and educational software became widespread in classrooms. These tools were marketed as solutions for personalized learning and efficiency. Instead, evidence increasingly suggests they may undermine deep cognitive processing. Screen-based learning fragments attention, encourages rapid task-switching, and reduces the need for memory consolidation.

Studies show that students who spend several hours per day using computers for learning often score substantially lower on standardized tests than peers with limited screen exposure. Outside school, smartphones and social media compound the problem. Many Gen Z individuals spend more than seven hours per day on screens, training their brains for constant stimulation rather than sustained focus.

Other contributing factors may include declining reading habits, curriculum shifts toward test preparation, and environmental exposures. However, the timing and scale of EdTech adoption align strikingly well with the observed cognitive declines.

Notably, countries such as Denmark have begun reversing course by limiting classroom screen use and emphasizing hands-on, social, and play-based learning—with early signs of cognitive stabilization.

What a Cognitive Decline Could Mean

If these trends persist, the consequences could extend far beyond test scores. Lower average cognitive ability may affect innovation, economic productivity, scientific problem-solving, and democratic decision-making. Complex global challenges—from climate change to public health—require sustained reasoning and deep understanding.

At the same time, Gen Z excels in areas traditional IQ tests often miss, including digital navigation, visual information processing, and rapid information filtering. This suggests not a loss of intelligence per se, but a reconfiguration of cognitive skills shaped by modern environments.

The critical takeaway is that the reverse Flynn effect appears to be environmentally driven—and therefore reversible. Educational policy, screen exposure limits, reading-focused curricula, and evidence-based technology use could restore cognitive gains in future generations.

As Horvath warned lawmakers, intelligence is not fixed, but it is fragile. How societies choose to educate children in the digital age may determine whether the reverse Flynn effect becomes a temporary dip—or a lasting legacy.