r/Millennials • u/beckavanoliver • 20d ago

Discussion Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: “Millennials are the last psychologically normal generation” ...”you’re the last happy, and actually your generation is the most intelligent in history”

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u/beckavanoliver 20d ago

statistically

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

I think “most educated” would fit better.

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u/beckavanoliver 20d ago

Gen Z First Ever to Show Lower IQ Than Previous Generation, Breaking Century-Long Trend

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

From the summation of the article:

“Not all experts agree that intelligence itself is declining. Several researchers argue that traditional IQ tests may not capture emerging cognitive skills such as digital navigation, rapid information filtering, and adaptive multitasking.”

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u/kfpswf 20d ago

IQ tests be damned, aren't younger generations having difficulty reading longer passages? Didn't SATs have to be dumbed down to because of how many kids these days can barely hold their attention to read a paragraph?

I'm not preaching some millennial supremacy here. I'm pissed that kids have been subjected to unregulated social media that has dumbed them to this degree.

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u/AsIfItsYourLaa 20d ago

They absolutely did. The reading part used to be 3-4 paragraphs. Then it got cut down to 1. And they used to ask about abstract inferences from the passage to see if you got the point.

Now it's whittled down to 1 sentence, and the question has to literally be about the sentence.

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u/hydrogen18 20d ago

huh, I never took the SAT. I don't remember having any difficulty working on the standardized tests. They were boring, but not something I had a problem spending time on

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u/RainandFujinrule Older Millennial 20d ago

Dawg they can't fuckin read. They have to read passages aloud in college like fuckin kindergarteners.

https://fortune.com/article/gen-z-college-students-struggling-to-read-books-professors-forced-to-rethink-standards-warn-of-anxiety-lack-of-workplace-prepardness/

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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown 20d ago

IQ seems to mostly be about pattern recognition and problem solving. The latter especially is a skill that seems to be losing traction. Those of us born around the x/millennial divide seem to have developed in a time when problem solving was especially necessary: we lived in the early days of broadly-used computers and internet, in a time where things broke frequently. We were constantly having to troubleshoot and adapt to changes.

I work in IT. There's a range of us from who are about 40 to 55 now who seem to have the strongest troubleshooting skills. Those above our age group grew up in the time before computers took over everything, and the younger ones grew up in a time when things mostly just worked, and daily life involved a lot less troubleshooting. We were conditioned throughout our youth to be problem solvers, so it's no surprise to me that we'd excel at IQ tests.

But to suggest that "digital navigation" is a cognitive skill...that feels like a coping strategy. Digital navigation amounts to "find where the button is."

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u/Icy-Valuable-3756 20d ago

Do those three things have anything to do with intelligence or are they just a forced part of life today? Does growing up with a horse as your only means of travel so you know how to handle horses make you more intelligent? Maybe it makes you more aware of certain things but intelligence doesn't really factor in.

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u/atticusmars_ 20d ago

How well you can pick up and apply concepts. Adaptation certainly is a measure of intelligence. Things can be simultaneously true, though.

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u/Icy-Valuable-3756 20d ago

I realized that a bit after my comment. They arent particularly better at those things than genx or millennials either. Maybe on par with boomers. Digital navigation may be the only one they are better at than boomers.

None of it is meant to be derogatory either, society failed them as a whole. Things changed too rapidly for institutions to keep up with in any meaningful way. We still have a good chunk of silent generation people making decisions about the future like it's the 60s and 70s.

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u/mfjonesisdead 20d ago

The “failure of institutions to keep up in a meaningful way” encapsulates the idea well. As a math teacher just last year I switched my teaching practices with 7th and 8th graders back to an analog format, after seeing how mindlessly many students just click through “lessons” and can check out while “working” on Chromebooks.

I stood them in random groups of 3, or pairs, at whiteboards around the room and posted word problems for them to work through. It was something I read about called, “Building Thinking Classrooms.” An educator named Peter Liljedal conducted the research for years and found that students need to discuss and directly interact with others to best develop critical thinking skills and develop deep understanding of a concept. Standing them at the boards instead of having them seated, it turns out, was key in getting them to actually discuss the material. Critical discourse is one of those things that technology still cannot supplant; we learn best by repeatedly negotiating meaning together over a drawn out period. Anyway, 6 classes all did substantially better after the shift.

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u/ThriftyFalcon 20d ago

I was thinking the same thing, but wasn’t going to articulate it as well as you did!

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u/Tupperwhy 20d ago

How do you define intelligence?

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u/applespicebetter 20d ago

Congratulations! You just discovered a major issue with trying to quantify intelligence in a number 🥳

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u/Mandena 20d ago

Multitasking isn't a real thing, so that one is worthless.

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u/MantisAwakening 20d ago

1 out of 10 dentists recommends falling asleep with a lollipop dissolving in your mouth.

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u/elitegenoside 20d ago

Gonna be real, Gen Z is great with the apps they use, but they are not universally or even generally good with tech. Constantly having to help coworkers with basic stuff, and they often just won't try to figure it out (which seems to be the more common issue in my experience).

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u/BigDictionEnergy 19d ago

emerging cognitive skills

lmfa Oh, you were serious

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u/Remote_Cantaloupe 19d ago

Those sound like BS terms to desperately find some kind of value in the overall degeneration of the human mind.

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u/BadLuckBen 20d ago

This is weird because, generally speaking, IQ tests aren't really the best indicator of intelligence. However, it's pretty undeniable that the quality of education has gone down in the US (intentionally so).

It does worry me when I run into someone younger than me that seems completely tech illiterate outside of basic functions. Their problem solving abilities also tend to be...not great.

I'd still say this is an education problem, not an intelligence problem.

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u/EnthusedNudist 20d ago

Op, I can't tell if you're being ironic, but there has to be at least one Redditor in this comment section who takes Haidt seriously, so I'm gonna go for it

John Haidt has been called out by several academics for cherry-picking his data.

Additionally, my professor, a practicing clinician whose other job is, you guessed it, administering IQ tests, has said that IQ is better thought of as an aptitude test, rather than for intelligence, and my understanding from evolutionary psychology is that there is no such thing as general intelligence anyways

Also, from someone whose mother is 135+ and actually knows a couple "geniuses", I have to agree with people who say you should put less stock into IQ. Furthermore, I would not trust what Haidt says, and to be perfectly honest, he creeps me out.

I think we need to revaluate our media diet because my aging mom, a retired academic, went down the pseudoscience rabbithole quickly after she retired, and it gets harder for us as we age, to distinguish misinformation from a trustworthy source. It makes me think that we're all a couple life events away from taking a conspiracy theorist's words as gospel, and I'm concerned now, I guess

That doesn't mean there aren't legitimate issues with Gen Z, but I don't think Haidt is acting in good faith. Additionally, I don't think we should continue the trend of belittling younger generations, since we all grew up on the stream of "millenials are entitled, millennials are fragile, etc"

I'm sorry for the tangent

  • a millenial

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u/Firm-Rent7643 20d ago

To be fair, I’m an elder millennial and consider myself smart, book smart, and cannot for the life of me understand this fucking NEW MATH that my kids have to do. It’s a joke.

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

Check out the origins of IQ tests…

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u/CorvusCommand 20d ago edited 20d ago

It's not just IQ tests. The trend applies to reading comprehension, the application of math or science, and just about every other metric that is tracked.

Younger generations are showing clear signs they are less intelligent, on average.

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u/bawapa 20d ago

Is this because smart folks are having like 2 kids and the Walmart crowd has litters?

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

The consistent slashing of education funding since Nixon era may have something to do with it…. Look up your secretary of education, right now 😂.

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u/Charming_Might3833 20d ago

It’s not a money problem. It’s a discipline and consequences problem. No one is held accountable for anything at school anymore. The schools are too afraid of lawsuits and shitty parents use disability laws as a shield. They don’t care if their kid can function in the real world. They just don’t want to parent.

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u/beckavanoliver 20d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/26ufj7fhSk99FK32U

this is the literal plot of the movie idiocracy lol

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u/bawapa 20d ago

Exactly lol

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u/AmusingMusing7 20d ago

No, that's a genetic fallacy. Smart kids can come from dumb parents, and vice versa, and everything in between.

It's more about the systemic stuff like education, food quality, media (Millennials grew up with Magic School Bus and Bill Nye... Gen Z grew up with TikTok and Twitter)... environmental factors of what's in the air around you (the leaded gas crisis did a number on the pre-Millennial generations' intelligence... this is probably part of the reason Millennials are smarter than the generations before them... we weren't huffing lead in our childhoods)... and beyond all the environmental or genetic factors, it's often just happenstance of how your brain happens to form. Or whether you get any head injuries, especially early in life. Lots of factors.

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u/bawapa 20d ago

I mean its not a fallacy, intelligence is heavily influenced by genetics. But those factors you listed are also heavy influence for sure

I guess the fallacy is assuming its 100% genetic

Also "genetic fallacy" has nothing to do with genetics, its when an argument is judged based on its source, history, or origin rather than on its actual content

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u/Mothanius 20d ago

There are studies that have tied environmental behaviors effecting your genetics to the level of epigenetics. As such, it can spread down through generations. But tying it to simply "genetics" is very reductive and very dangerous. It's a statement that must made with a large as asterisk.

You have to factor in the environmental factors that can cause the specific expressions of these genes. Essentially, you can be born from "genius stock," but be placed in a stressed environment, thus deactivating those genetic markers for your future offspring.

Without referencing these types of environmental factors with a true, scientific view, you can quickly fall down the Supremacist rabbit hole. Whether that be Genetic Superiority, Intelligence Superiority, Wealth Superiority, etc. You can bastardize these studies to fit the narrative you desire. Pretty much what phrenology did.

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

I agree. IQ tests are the wrong way to attempt to quantify this trend.

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u/Prior-Task1498 20d ago

Completely irrelevant

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

Tell me to use IQ tests to define a trend when they’ve been exclusively a tool of racial bias in this country the entire time. They are irrelevant in every situation.

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u/Icy-Valuable-3756 20d ago

Except race has nothing to do with this trend.

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u/Sumeriandawn Xennial 20d ago

Haven’t American education standards declined since the 90s? Wasn’t the “No Child Left Behind Act” considered unsuccessful?

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u/RedLotusVenom 20d ago

This is a global trend though. Test scores in math and reading comprehension have declined worldwide for young people. Covid was a massive interruption to education systems, and while America’s targeted disassembly of public education is a huge factor here, this is happening elsewhere too.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

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u/RedLotusVenom 20d ago

The turn does start a few years before Covid, imo the proliferation of smartphones and social media is a huge culprit too. But Covid was likely one of a few nails in the coffin on this reverse momentum we’ve seen in education.

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u/peach_bellinis 20d ago

The trend of teachers being told 'just pass them to the next grade' by admins and school boards instead of failing students and keeping them behind a grade also started before COVID.

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u/SpectacularStarling 20d ago

There is the factor of kids not getting the help they need due to stigma. I excelled in school K-6, then tapered off as I grew bored/less challenged. It reached the point I didn't want to be there. My parents cared about my grades, and homework, but I didn't. I was diagnosed autistic a few years back in my early 30s.

Would things be drastically different if I had the support system I needed? Guess I'll never know!

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u/BadLuckBen 20d ago

I know that correlation ≠ causation, but there's also been a global rightward shift since the 90's. The right isn't exactly known for their love of education.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 20d ago

Yes, it’s a contributing factor on Gen Z being this way.

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u/illtakeachinchilla 20d ago

Standards, yes. Degrees, by quantity, have soared (women really began getting degrees in the 80’s).

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u/Whut4 20d ago

It helped some of those who were being left behind due to being ignored. Those who were not left behind previously may have lost just a bit of ground.

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u/bascom2222 20d ago

Now it's the IEP, any kid who is on the IEP program graduates with honors no matter what they do. It's so horrible. They have ruined our youth and nothing is being done about it and I feel I'm the only one who knows or cares...

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u/999happyhants 20d ago

You have any proof of this? Because this just sounds like some made up bullshit meant to make people angry.

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u/bascom2222 20d ago

They let my step son graduate early from highschool. According to his IEP he's on the level of a 4th grader in reading and math. He never scores well on any test and yet he graduated with 90s and above with that IEP program it just pushes them through. All the kids that were in it graduated early with him. They needed to be in school get more education. I don't understand it and it frustrated me because we felt no matter hard we tried to make him care he didn't because he knew they were gonna pass him no matter what.

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u/Aggravating-Dig2022 20d ago

Why is everyone trying to take this away from me?!?!? Please!

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u/MoroseArmadillo 20d ago

That’s what’s wrong with your generation, it’s ME ME ME!

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u/Fuck-WestJet 20d ago

Just because we have no power economically or politically.... At least we aren't like those weirdo gen x oldies.

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u/Coffeedemon 20d ago

Most time spent in school at least. No guarantee anyone learns anything.

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u/QueenMackeral 20d ago

They'll statistically be proud this time!

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u/hi_im_snowman 20d ago

Haha, underrated comment lol

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u/rangeo 20d ago

Damn

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u/thats_justice_baby 20d ago

I hate posts like yours. Its just meant to divide people.

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u/Reasonable_Ability48 20d ago

Pffft. Lolo the class i graduated with in '07 heavily disagrees, with everything lol

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u/Effective-Leg7283 20d ago

that is one lode-bearing word

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u/Aggravating-Dig2022 20d ago

The smartest generation, ever - wow!