According to researchers, they have discovered the first generation, which is less intelligent than the generation that came before it.
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Neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath is arguing that Gen Z might be stunted cognitively because of their over-reliance on technology such as their smartphones.
In the last 200 years, the academic achievements which have declined considerably in recent years from Millennials to those categorized in Gen Z has been attributed to the rapid development of digital tools. Dr Horvath explained to a Senate committee last month that this was happening even though children are spending longer times in school than ever.
Gen Z is the first generation to have grown up with easy access to the internet at home and at school. According to Dr. Horvath, this might have caused them to lose skills in problem-solving, reading, memory, mathematics, and attention span.
According to reports, Horvath told the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee that this is directly related to the rise in the use of ‘educational technology’ by schools, in which teachers use tablets or computers as part of the new learning process.
The neuroscientist went on to claim that humans had not evolved over millions of years to merely absorb short video clips and convert them into understanding and memory.
Earlier last month, Horvath told the committee, “More than half of the time a teenager is awake, half of it is spent staring at a screen. Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries.”
He also argued that, as social creatures, we developed to learn from one another through face-to-face discussions, not through YouTube videos or AI-generated summaries.
Even looking at a screen can disrupt the process by which the brain stores information. It also hurts our ability to focus. He shared that he believed it was not a matter of developing better apps but returning to how humans are known to perceieve and process information better.
He said, “The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning. If you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly.”
He posed a question for the legislators, asking, “What do kids do on computers? They skim. So rather than determining what do we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool. That’s not progress, that is surrender.”
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