In a recent Substack post, Jared Cooney Horvath unpacks the controversial claim he made during recent U.S. Senate testimony: that our kids are measurably less cognitively capable than previous generations. Cue a heap of sensationalist headlines. But what is he actually saying? He anchors the discussion in the “Negative Flynn Effect” the reversal of the 20th-century trend of rising IQ scores. Drawing on his detailed analysis he reveals a cognitive split;

Young people perform moderately better on visually guided, externally scaffolded tasks (likely due to heavy digital interface use), they show significant declines in internally scaffolded reasoning. These are the language, memory, and executive function skills that require sustained mental effort.

Crucially, Horvath argues that IQ is a measure of “school-ability” rather than intelligence. Since this ability is causally linked to years of schooling, the decline is not a genetic shift, but an indictment of the educational tools themselves. He contends that despite more time in classrooms, students are losing these core competencies because digital tools have made learning “too smooth.” By outsourcing cognitive work to screens, students encounter less productive struggle, the friction that makes the deep thinking.

This trend should be reversible, but only if we pivot from embracing tools that do the thinking for young people to making sure they do the thinking for themselves.

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