Is Gen Z Less Intelligent?

Or Are We Measuring an Evolved Mind with Outdated Tools?

A recent headline declared that Gen Z is “less intelligent” than Millennials and earlier generations, drawing on testimony from neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath about declines in attention, literacy, numeracy and IQ.

It is a claim that spreads quickly. It confirms anxieties. It reinforces nostalgia.

But before we accept the narrative that an entire generation is cognitively declining, we need to ask more disciplined questions.

Less intelligent according to what?

Measured using which instruments?

Designed for which economic and social context?

Because intelligence does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped, expressed and rewarded within systems.

And systems evolve more slowly than societies.

Intelligence According to 1905

Modern intelligence testing emerged in the early 20th century, when Alfred Binet developed tools to identify students who needed additional academic support, not to rank innate human worth (Binet & Simon, 1905).

Over time, IQ became a proxy for intelligence itself.

Standardised measures privilege particular cognitive capacities:

• rapid recall

• processing speed

• linear reasoning

• linguistic and mathematical abstraction

• individual performance under time pressure

These capacities were highly valued in industrial economies built on standardisation, predictability and efficiency.

Schools mirrored factories because factories defined economic success.

But Gen Z is not entering an industrial economy.

They are entering a world shaped by:

• artificial intelligence

• automation

• exponential information growth

• global interdependence

• complex social and ecological challenges

If the environment changes but the metrics remain fixed, misalignment is inevitable.

The Reverse Flynn Effect Is Not a Moral Diagnosis

It is true that IQ scores in some Western nations have plateaued or declined slightly after decades of increases. This phenomenon, often referred to as the reverse Flynn effect, has been documented in countries including Norway and Denmark (Bratsberg & Rogeberg, 2018).

However, researchers are clear that IQ shifts are environmentally driven, not biological regression (Flynn, 2007).

IQ scores rise and fall with changes in:

• educational practices

• occupational demands

• family environments

• cultural exposure

• technological context

A plateau in IQ scores does not mean human intelligence is collapsing. It may indicate that the kinds of abstract reasoning measured by traditional tests are no longer reinforced in daily life in the same way.

When we broaden the lens beyond IQ, the story becomes more complex.

Rönnlund et al. (2022) found that more recent generations outperformed earlier cohorts in processing speed, executive function and verbal fluency. Executive function underpins planning, cognitive flexibility and goal-directed behaviour.

Research examining digital critical thinking suggests younger cohorts demonstrate comparatively strong ability to navigate, interpret and interact with digital information environments (Cortesi et al., 2020).

These findings complicate the narrative.

Decline in some measured domains. Strength in others.

That is evolution, not collapse.

Cognition Is Changing. That Has Always Happened.

It would be naïve to dismiss concerns about attention and deep reading. Heavy media multitasking has been associated with reduced ability to filter distractions and sustain concentration (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009).

There are legitimate trade-offs in a high-stimulation environment.

But cognitive trade-offs are not new.

When writing replaced oral storytelling traditions, philosophers feared memory would weaken.

When the printing press expanded access to books, scholars worried people would stop memorising entire texts.

When calculators entered classrooms, concerns about mental arithmetic surged.

Each technological shift redistributed cognitive effort.

Some processes became externalised. Other capacities expanded.

What we call intelligence has always been shaped by tools.

So the real question is not whether cognition is changing. It clearly is.

The deeper question is whether those changes are maladaptive in the world Gen Z inhabits.

In a world defined by algorithmic feeds, AI collaboration, global complexity and rapid information exchange, there is heightened demand for:

• discernment over storage

• synthesis over memorisation

• pattern recognition across systems

• navigation of ambiguity

• ethical reasoning in digital spaces

• collaborative problem solving

These are cognitively demanding tasks.

If Gen Z processes information differently, it may reflect adaptation to environmental complexity rather than deterioration.

The risk is not evolution.

The risk is imbalance.

Deep reading still matters. Sustained attention still matters. Slow thinking still matters.

But so do agility, digital fluency, and systems thinking.

The work of education is not to resist cognitive evolution, nor to surrender to it. It is to intentionally cultivate the full cognitive range students require.

From Measurement to Design: The Contemporary Learning Imperative

If we accept that cognition evolves alongside environment, then education cannot remain static.

At EduShift, we often speak about designing learning for the world students are entering, not the one we inherited.

This is not a slogan. It is a design principle.

The industrial model of schooling was built for efficiency, uniformity and predictability. It made sense when economic success required compliance, repetition and procedural accuracy.

But the contemporary world demands something fundamentally different.

It demands learners who can:

• think critically in the presence of AI

• discern truth in saturated information ecosystems

• collaborate across cultures and disciplines

• navigate uncertainty with confidence

• design solutions for problems that do not yet have clear answers

That requires more than content recall.

It requires a redefinition of rigour.

Rigour in a contemporary context means sustained inquiry, feedback-rich environments, interdisciplinary thinking, human-AI partnership, ethical reasoning and the capacity to iterate in complex systems.

If our assessments still privilege speed, recall and isolated performance under time pressure, we are not simply mismeasuring intelligence.

We are misaligning education with reality.

Future-proofing education does not mean abandoning foundational skills. Literacy, numeracy, deep reading and conceptual understanding remain essential. But they are no longer sufficient.

Students must learn how to:

• integrate knowledge across domains

• apply learning in authentic contexts

• think systemically rather than linearly

• operate fluently in digital and physical environments

• reflect, adapt and recalibrate in real time

When headlines declare generational decline, they distract us from the more urgent design question:

Are we intentionally building these capacities into the daily architecture of learning?

If the answer is no, then the issue is not Gen Z.

It is us.

Education cannot prepare students for an AI-integrated, globally complex world using a model optimised for industrial compliance.

Contemporary learning is not progressive ideology.

It is structural necessity.

And if we are serious about future readiness, then what we measure must align with what we value.

The Real Danger Is Reactionary Retreat

The most concerning outcome of “Gen Z is less intelligent” headlines is not the claim itself.

It is the potential policy response.

If we respond by doubling down on narrow standardisation, rote memorisation and compliance-driven instruction, we risk preparing students for a world that no longer exists.

Rigour today cannot simply mean recall.

Rigour must include:

• sustained inquiry

• human-AI collaboration

• ethical judgement in complex systems

• interdisciplinary thinking

• iterative design and problem solving

These are not soft skills.

They are survival skills in a networked economy.

If we retreat to nostalgic models of schooling, we may produce compliance rather than competence.

Perhaps the Better Question Is This

If cognition is evolving, then perhaps the conversation we need is not about decline at all.

Perhaps the better questions are:

What has evolved? What capacities are emerging? How do we intentionally strengthen both depth and agility? And how should we change what we measure so young people have a genuine opportunity to experience success in the world they actually inhabit, not the one we keep testing them against?

Because here is the quiet danger of generational deficit narratives.

When we repeatedly tell a generation they are underperforming against outdated metrics, we risk shaping identity as much as policy. We risk narrowing aspiration. We risk reinforcing systems that were never designed for their context.

If intelligence includes discernment in an AI-saturated world, ethical reasoning in digital spaces, systems thinking in global crises and collaborative problem solving across cultures, then our assessments must reflect those realities.

If rigour today requires sustained inquiry alongside digital fluency, then our classrooms must cultivate both.

If education is to prepare young people for flourishing, not nostalgia, then our definitions of intelligence must evolve with the world.

The issue may not be that Gen Z is less intelligent.

The issue may be that our systems have not yet been courageous enough to redefine what intelligence looks like in the century they are preparing to lead.

References

Binet, A., & Simon, T. (1905). Méthodes nouvelles pour le diagnostic du niveau intellectuel des anormaux. L’Année Psychologique.

Bratsberg, B., & Rogeberg, O. (2018). Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(26), 6674–6678.

Cortesi, S., Hasse, A., Lombana-Bermudez, A., Kim, S., & Gasser, U. (2020). Youth and digital citizenship. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Flynn, J. R. (2007). What is intelligence? Beyond the Flynn effect. Cambridge University Press.

Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583–15587.

Rönnlund, M., Nyberg, L., Bäckman, L., & Nilsson, L. G. (2022). Secular trends in cognitive performance: Evidence from the Betula study. Intelligence, 91, 101626.