Growing up, we used to have teachers call the television “the idiot box.” Spend too much time in front of the TV and we’ll all become idiots, they’d say. I was reminded of this when I learnt about “the reverse Flynn effect.”
The Flynn effect is the observed, long-term rise in fluid and crystallized intelligence (IQ) test scores across the 20th century, named after researcher James Flynn. In measures of general intelligence (GIQ), verbal intelligence (VIQ) and non-verbal intelligence (NIQ), scores tended up for every decade since world war II…
… until 2010.
Baz, Sezerel, et al, found the trend to be consistently downward since.
Across both boys and girls – with a stronger effect on girls.
While some of the biggest drops came during the COVID-19 pandemic, these trends have been heading downward since before 2020 – across both teens and adults.
That brings me back to the idiot box.
When I was growing up, we needed to go the idiot box, turn it on, and watch.
The difference now is that we’ve got a portable version of this idiot box in our pockets. And these trends are just the first-order effects.
Our phones are not just making us stupid. They’re making us angrier and more depressed.
Either we learn to use them carefully or they use us.
