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A stunning essay in the FT on the international decline in the ability to read, reason, focus, and learn new things. It began or accelerated in the early 2010s. It's hitting teens AND adults. Self-report and objective scores. by

@jburnmurdoch

ft.com/content/a8016c

6:56 AM · Mar 14, 2025

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Jonathan Haidt

@JonHaidt

Mar 14

Here's more, from numeracy and literacy tests given to adults via this source: nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/

Burn-Murdoch notes that when the latest PISA data came out, most people focused on the decline during the COVID years. But the decline "masked a longer-term and broader deterioration..."

Everything in tech is geared to trying to hijack your attention and reward centers. This leaves no time for reflection, learning and insight.

wonder why everyone needs stimulants to function in society now sure hope this is isn't a self reinforcing spiral. id bet opioids are also a coping mechanism for digital dopamine hijacked brains

Nate Hake

@natejhake

Mar 14

This is the goal of Big Tech. Pound your dopamine receptors until you are a complaint blob When you can't reason for yourself, their AI can do it for you (in ways they control)

12K

WE News English

@WENewsEnglish

Pakistan’s love for vintage books refutes reading decline claims Old book stalls on footpaths attract scores every Sunday Which books are young readers interested in? tinyurl.com/4fjszdms

ChatGPT: “The most impactful insight from John Burn-Murdoch’s Financial Times essay ‘Have humans passed peak brain power?’ is that human intelligence isn’t declining due to biological limitations, but because of a fundamental shift in how we interact with information. This

Phones are one hell of a drug. And if we don’t set ironclad rules about how we use them, they will ruin us. Here’s what I recommend to my readers: #1: Do not buy a smartphone for your child. The evidence is overwhelming. Giving your kid an iPhone is a very, very bad idea. If

Fan you summarise pls? Preferably in the form of a short TikTok video?

This does not bode well for humanity. If the new generations are unable to read, focus, reason, learn ... to this degree ... It will materially effect our future

Bogdan Nitu

@bogdanitz

12h

That is the cost we pay for never growing up, never evolving, comfortably numbing ourselves within the familiar confines of our own caves and social circles.

An unrecognized crises of immense proportions. You can collect all the published data, and conclusions that emerge from it, but if you can’t reason with knowledge or decide when to convert it into information, we as a species are lost. But perhaps, that’s the cynical intent!

Here's another look for you. Such a mystery. Keeping your cognitive capacity will be such an advantage if you can do it.

2.8K

World Scientific

@worldscientific

This study by Qingyuan Xue & Nopphol Witvorapong sheds light on family dynamics during social security reforms. Free access until March 31, 2025.

FREE TO READ

From worldscientific.com

Nietzsche’s Retarded Stallion

@TheUgliest_Man

23h

Fairfax county spent $150mm trying to teach illegal migrant children how to read. They failed. Now they’re hiring consultants to decide whether the county wants less policing or less firefighting services because they can no long afford the same of both. Demographics are destiny

Massive demographic change has consequences.

Time to break out my favourite graph, which I think is connected to all kinds of societal decline:

Quote

Dan Gray

@credistick

Nov 28, 2022

Replying to @credistick and @DKThomp

Source: @DavidRozado

I'm sure its multifactorial, but phones have to be a factor here. I can't wait to get away from my smartphone completely. Still need for 2FA and some other things, but basically all of my internet access is now through my desktop and I'm better for it.

Why so serious?

@DeltaXR9

Mar 14

Social media perhaps? I wonder what role AI will play with this.

this is wild. gotta preserve cognitive abilities at any cost, soon they might be very valuable

Too much stimuli and task switching as we try to do everything across everything… the sweet spot is going to be very hard to find

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@KevinBCook

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Jared Feldman - Business Financing

@JaredFeldman88

Mar 14

it's the phones! it's the phones! it's the phone! i dont know why we continue to dance around this. we don't want to give up our binkys, i guess

In under 20 yrs the oldest millennials will be entering the window of early onset dementia, unless that window is now earlier because medication & non stop dopamine hits from screens moves it up. The iPad babysitter fee might be coming due, soon.

3.2K

Institute for Humane Studies

@TheIHS

How does cancel culture influence academic productivity? Kris Gulati’s award-winning research uncovers the challenges facing scholars and offers solutions to protect academic freedom. Learn more about his work and other IHS Research Award winners.

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Has the way we measure these changed significantly in that time?

Queue the picture of a cell phone open to a social media app

Can we see the demographic breakdown?

1.1K

𝖘𝖆𝖕𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖘 𝖛𝖎𝖗𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖆𝖓𝖆

@Ortho_Dixie

Licenses (and hourly limits) for phone access are more justified than for driving, and it isn't close. Communities that develop this as a de facto social norm will conquer the world.

Some possible factors to consider: - Microplastics in our brains - Social Media, a global psychology experiment - Smartphones - COVID, which can cause brain damage - Less time off a computer & with people

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C. R. Walton (Sci-Fi & Fantasy Author)

@lithologuy

21h

Which group of people are most impacted by this?

Psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge has talked about how the social media algorithms amplify narcissism and sites like IG or TT have beauty enhancement filters, etc. to amplify engagement. So this is the positive feedback loop conditioning what kids prioritize.

“PIAAC reports out five literacy proficiency levels: from below level 1 to level 4/5.” “This analysis combines the top two proficiency levels (Levels 4 and 5), following the OECD’s reporting convention (OECD 2013), because across all participating countries, no more than 2

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The Monkey in the Machine

@MonkeyInMachine

Mar 14

This sounds very interesting. Sadly, it's behind a paywall. Is there a non-FT source?

Got to be cell phones that at least partially explains it. Explains the competence crisis too.

TakingHayekSeriously

@FriedrichHayek

Professors and K-12 educators are shocked that students don't learn what professors and educators REFUSE TO TEACH.

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President of Law & Order

@RealHumptyB

Mar 14

Not entirely sure our so-called 'elites' *want* an educated, thinking population. Carries with it too many risks?

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Imaginative Drift

@MasterLogician_

social media perhaps? unstructured information? environmental toxin exposure?

I Can Go To College

@IcangotoCollege

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Most K-12 and colleges DO NOT teach informal reasoning, inference to the best explanation, critical thinking, analytic reading and paraphrase, or informal fallacies. Academics and educators are hostile to these and keep them out of their curriculum.

The smartphone + social media onslaught of nonsense was bad enough. Now LLMs that "do work" for students can seal their fate as they now skip both the reading and the writing about what they could learn. I made a 5-min video about this in 2018...

youtube.com

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Before the Internet and the smartphone, media and education theorist Neil Postman suggested that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was more prescient about our...

We don't need to bother with it soon because of Neuralink

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President of Law & Order

@RealHumptyB

Mar 14

U18s. We've *got* to start getting rid of gadgets, Jon. Becoming urgent. Like to see equivalent data for China too.

Huh, look at that curve since 2020. Such a "mystery." Definitely not that thing of which we do not speak.

Self reported? If so it's bollocks. We have an epidemic of "I am unique"ism.

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ISD

@ISDeptJP1

If memory is a function of the strength of the neural synaptic connections, that are influenced at least partly by the duration and repetitive action of focus on something; I would think it’s not hard to find a correlation between “the decline and attention span” due to the

need to see it split by race

Let's check in on the demographic changes in these "high-income countries" over this time period.

1.9K

Alexander Boldizar

@Boldizar

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There's that damn c. 2012 period again

Big tech has fried their minds.

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Valerius Ander (MM) - Omnologos

@omnologos

Mostly among people who still read the FT

Jeremy Berke

@jfberke

Mar 14

The phones? It's the phones.

Automated

The internet gave everyone a voice. Turns out most of them should've stayed silent. No wonder they can't focus - they're too busy staring at TikTok to realize their brains are turning to fucking pudding. Society's getting dumber by the minute while I'm building empires. Darwin

chatgpt what do you think about this post? report back in a single word of vibe type...

Social media or streaming services as a cause?

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Alex Napier Holland

@NapierHolland

I feel so lucky to have a creative job. Sometimes my brain hurts when I go to sleep.

Elijah Young

@elijah_you44891

23h

Mass immigration caused this.

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@Purpsky88

Mar 14

AI readying the ground for its rise already.

Why is that even important? Reading has not helped societies heal, have they?

Naveen Sankar S

@NaveenSankarS

New insights into how the immune system shapes mood and memory! Researchers reveal how IL-1R1 in the brain influences behavior, offering hope for treating inflammation-linked disorders like depression and anxiety. Check out the latest research at news.justcarehealth.com

Learn “new things” like how to use LLMs, smart phones or type using Qwerty keyboards? Psychological pseudoscience.

Stunning but not shocking! Sad.

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nik

@RealNick05

That's when smartphones came into play. That's when social media really started to have its boom.

Destroyer of Appetizers

@Okratarian

microplastics, seeds oils, smart phones, or forever chemicals? all of the above

Omer Feldman Yofiël

@FeldmanYofiel

14h

What are the key takeaways?

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Trace Cohen

@Trace_Cohen

Yes the Apple iPhone + Facebook

J Curve Capital

@JCurveCap

22h

There were side effects

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M.P. Summers

@MPSummers38

★★★★★ "a remarkable achievement in historical storytelling...a profound, moving, and deeply worthwhile read" - Literary Titan "This is the kind of book that lingers in your thoughts long after you turn the last page." - International Review of Books

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This is consistent with the rise of social media and extremely troubling at other a societal and individual level

@EadrictheWild

Does this track in China , Japan and Poland?

Klara Crean

@campcrean

11h

Seems like it correlates with the explosion of smartphones.

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The Good Statistician aka Nigel Jacklin

@TheGoodStatsMan

16h

It could be worse. Those with a low attention span may not have completed the survey!

COVID infections cause permanent brain damage. The science is clear and overwhelming

I can barely read a page of written text before I feel the need to check my social media. It's the damn social media.

Zubin

@ZMadon

Mar 14

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Zubin

@ZMadon

Mar 14

100%. My kids find it impossible to focus on any learning activity for more than a minute. And the discomfort involved in the process of learning something new like the piano puts them off. Zero patience for it. I suspect it's early exposure to screens. x.com/JonHaidt/statu…

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