Mar 6, 2026 10:58 PM
https://psyche.co/ideas/iq-scores-are-fa...ore-stupid
EXCERPTS: In the past decade, researchers have found data suggesting that, on average, the populations of developed Western countries are becoming more stupid. It’s a reversal of the so-called Flynn Effect, named after the New Zealand philosopher and intelligence researcher James Flynn. In the 1980s, Flynn had shown that, between the 1930s and the 1970s, average intelligence rose by three IQ points per decade in the United States and in other Western nations, a trend that seemed to persist until the 1990s. But then in the early years of the 21st century, Flynn noticed something disturbing: IQ scores for even the brightest children in the US and the UK had started to decline. And in Nordic nations, Flynn projected that average national intelligence scores – some of which had been declining since the mid-1990s – could drop by around seven IQ points over the following 30 years.
Plenty of reasons are given for this decline. In November 2025, Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York magazine, cited several possible factors: outsourcing our cognitive labour to AIs, being glued to our screens, the ongoing effects of COVID-19 and, though this is probably a niche factor, too-strong weed. ‘The world is dumber, and we all know it,’ writes Brown. ‘Lately, it feels like that culturewide upgrade to our mental operating systems has been rolled back to an older and buggier version.’
The negative Flynn Effect, however, isn’t what it seems. Firstly, falling average intelligence among Western nations is perfectly compatible with rising intelligence rates among certain sections of their populations. But more worryingly, the IQ tests on which Flynn relies are of doubtful value. Our stupidity, it turns out, is not always easy to understand.
[...] So, even if our intelligence measures really are flawed, what explains the rise and fall of IQ scores? Flynn hypothesised the importance of environmental factors, including changes in education, nutrition, family structure, economic pressures, microplastics, antidepressants and woodfire smoke. But that’s not an adequate explanation: from the 1930s, when average national intelligence rose in developed Western nations decade on decade, other deleterious environmental factors were at play. There was a lack of free public education and socialised healthcare, and toxic air pollution – a known factor influencing intelligence scores and cognition – was often unchecked. Complicating things further, what Flynn proposed as negative factors may be positive ones, and vice versa. Antidepressants, for instance, might help with improving one’s intelligence precisely by lifting one out of existential hopelessness.
More recently, observers have suggested two knockdown factors accounting for the apparent declines in average national intelligences: screens and social media. For many, these are intuitively seen as accelerants to the 21st century’s bonfire of stupidity – we seem to collectively sense that they are dumbing us down.
On this point, it’s worth noting that the scores used to support the negative Flynn Effect weren’t down in every category. [...] citizens tracked falling scores in logic, vocabulary, visual and mathematical problem-solving, and analogical reasoning. Only scores for spatial ability – the measure of the mind’s ability to analyse three-dimensional objects – rose during that period for the average American. [...] spatial ability, for instance, is more important to today’s cognitive elites than reading. Certainly, you’ll need the former if you’re going to be any good at fast, visually intensive online games such as Fortnite.
[...] Intuitively, the argument that digital media is dumbing us down is plausible. And book after book, based on study after study, appears to confirm our intuitions. Computers and smartphones spare us cognitive labour. As a result, the human mind has less to do. Therefore, the need to be intelligent is less of an evolutionary imperative than it was in the pre-digital era. Computers and smartphones are more complex than ever, but human routines are oddly simpler. Generations ago, dishwashers and clothes dryers eased physical labours in daily life. Today, an iPhone or an Amazon Echo can ease mental labour, enabling us, the creators of these machines, to slide into the warm bath of mental fatuity. But perhaps, in principle at least, using an Echo or talking with ChatGPT allows you to free your mind for more cognitively challenging work... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: In the past decade, researchers have found data suggesting that, on average, the populations of developed Western countries are becoming more stupid. It’s a reversal of the so-called Flynn Effect, named after the New Zealand philosopher and intelligence researcher James Flynn. In the 1980s, Flynn had shown that, between the 1930s and the 1970s, average intelligence rose by three IQ points per decade in the United States and in other Western nations, a trend that seemed to persist until the 1990s. But then in the early years of the 21st century, Flynn noticed something disturbing: IQ scores for even the brightest children in the US and the UK had started to decline. And in Nordic nations, Flynn projected that average national intelligence scores – some of which had been declining since the mid-1990s – could drop by around seven IQ points over the following 30 years.
Plenty of reasons are given for this decline. In November 2025, Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York magazine, cited several possible factors: outsourcing our cognitive labour to AIs, being glued to our screens, the ongoing effects of COVID-19 and, though this is probably a niche factor, too-strong weed. ‘The world is dumber, and we all know it,’ writes Brown. ‘Lately, it feels like that culturewide upgrade to our mental operating systems has been rolled back to an older and buggier version.’
The negative Flynn Effect, however, isn’t what it seems. Firstly, falling average intelligence among Western nations is perfectly compatible with rising intelligence rates among certain sections of their populations. But more worryingly, the IQ tests on which Flynn relies are of doubtful value. Our stupidity, it turns out, is not always easy to understand.
[...] So, even if our intelligence measures really are flawed, what explains the rise and fall of IQ scores? Flynn hypothesised the importance of environmental factors, including changes in education, nutrition, family structure, economic pressures, microplastics, antidepressants and woodfire smoke. But that’s not an adequate explanation: from the 1930s, when average national intelligence rose in developed Western nations decade on decade, other deleterious environmental factors were at play. There was a lack of free public education and socialised healthcare, and toxic air pollution – a known factor influencing intelligence scores and cognition – was often unchecked. Complicating things further, what Flynn proposed as negative factors may be positive ones, and vice versa. Antidepressants, for instance, might help with improving one’s intelligence precisely by lifting one out of existential hopelessness.
More recently, observers have suggested two knockdown factors accounting for the apparent declines in average national intelligences: screens and social media. For many, these are intuitively seen as accelerants to the 21st century’s bonfire of stupidity – we seem to collectively sense that they are dumbing us down.
On this point, it’s worth noting that the scores used to support the negative Flynn Effect weren’t down in every category. [...] citizens tracked falling scores in logic, vocabulary, visual and mathematical problem-solving, and analogical reasoning. Only scores for spatial ability – the measure of the mind’s ability to analyse three-dimensional objects – rose during that period for the average American. [...] spatial ability, for instance, is more important to today’s cognitive elites than reading. Certainly, you’ll need the former if you’re going to be any good at fast, visually intensive online games such as Fortnite.
[...] Intuitively, the argument that digital media is dumbing us down is plausible. And book after book, based on study after study, appears to confirm our intuitions. Computers and smartphones spare us cognitive labour. As a result, the human mind has less to do. Therefore, the need to be intelligent is less of an evolutionary imperative than it was in the pre-digital era. Computers and smartphones are more complex than ever, but human routines are oddly simpler. Generations ago, dishwashers and clothes dryers eased physical labours in daily life. Today, an iPhone or an Amazon Echo can ease mental labour, enabling us, the creators of these machines, to slide into the warm bath of mental fatuity. But perhaps, in principle at least, using an Echo or talking with ChatGPT allows you to free your mind for more cognitively challenging work... (MORE - missing details)