Americans ARE getting Dumber

[Berserker13]

It's a western civilization thing and it's all by design. Look up the biggest internet search results from teenagers. Western countries it's tiktok, YouTube, and Instagram BS. China it's STEM topics. Whoever controls the media and schools controls the mind.

you're a sucker for Chinese propaganda aren't you?

 

[wwkirk]

I've joked around that Americans have gotten dumber and chalked it up as confirmation bias when I encountered stupidity. I was astounded by those videos where people ask college kids basic general knowledge questions and they don't know basic stuff like what countries make up North America, or how many planets there are. I chalked these up to the content creators picking and choosing particularly stupid kids or editing the videos in a skewed manner.

But it seems the data is evident of an alarming trend: people are actually are getting dumber.

American literacy and numeracy rates have fallen in recent years. 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade reading level. 21% are illiterate.


This video mentions changes in the education system and phone usage as well as a lack of tech/media literacy.

One of the most annoying trends for me is the lack of literacy on social media. You could post say, the sale of your used bicycle clearly outlining the model and price, and you'll still have people asking you what model it is and how much it is. I see a trend of people not knowing how to take a second to read the description. I would say this isn't just an American problem, but a global phenomenon since everybody in the entire planet is hooked on social media now.

I've talked about before how it seems like the younger generation doesn't know how to use the technology in their hands either. With each subsequent generation, the new generation loses skills of previous generations but the trade off is that become more tech savvy. But this new generation seems like they don't even know how to be tech savvy either. Other than tik tok and asking chat GTP things, they don't seem know that their phones can access a vast wealth of information. I've had younger people ask me stuff that could be easily found on google. I expected that I would have to teach my grandmother how to use her phone, but not 20 year olds.

People also seem to rely on AI for answers more and more instead of researching stuff on google. When I went to college, reading wikipedia was considered the lazy route, but now kids can't even do that and want chat gtp to give them easy to digest answers. The problem is that AI still gets a lot of stuff wrong and with the lack of critical thinking these days, people may just going to believe whatever AI tells them.

I'll note that another factor is that now google likes to give you answers generated by AI and/or sponsored content, which might take more effort to filter through than in the past. A lot stuff is also blocked by a paywall which doesn't help.

I know it's cliché of older generations to rag on the new generation for becoming stupider, lazier, weaker, etc. but I am starting to think the new generations are fucked. I used to think newer generations would be at least intellectually smarter, have more critical thinking skills, and be more tech savvy, but I am not sure that is the case now. Kids play outside less now, people are less connected to nature, more socially awkward, they read much less, get stuck in intellectual echo chambers online, become addicted to social media and less capable of researching information on their own. The new generation does seem to be getting lazier and weaker but without the tradeoff of tech savviness and critical thinking skills.

What do you guys think?

TLDR version because reading is hard:
1. Literacy and numeracy rates in the US have gone down due to issues in the education system.
2. People are addicted to their phones and social media.
3. People have shorter attention spans to read or pick up details even if they're clearly stated.
4. People have less critical thinking skills - online echo chambers.
5. Reliance on AI - less tech literacy.
6. People have overall less practical/real world skills on top of having less soft skills like critical thinking and social awareness.
7. We're just getting stupider/less capable in every dimension.

Tech makes it easy to be dumb, and I don't think the education system is as effective as it could or should be. But overall, I think the culture is just dumbing down. Consider the literacy of MLK's speeches and the fact that people expected to hear elevated discourse. Around the same time there used to be formal debates on TV (e.g. William F. Buckley). In fact, I'm pretty sure there were televised high school debates for a time.

And if you go back 100+ years, it was almost like a different civilization in terms of the quality of mind of a large portion of the population, not just intellectuals. Personally, when reading older texts I'm repeatedly humbled by author quotes that don't get translated because it is presumed that any educated person would be able to read them.

 

[Jack Reacheround]

I have no doubt Americans have gotten dumber. Public education has been absolutely gutted in this country for 30 - 40 years now. What did people think was going to happen?

 

[Substance Abuse]

No shit. Just enter a few War Room threads.

 

[Ezekiel 25:17]

People with the most common sense and logic I have met have been mainly in European countries. North America is full of ego driven schlubs.

 

[William Huggins]

TiKTok didn't help...

Apparently some think it's a really useful tool to learn great new things.....

This post was brought to you by the CCP......

 

[William Huggins]

I guess the younger generation read and write less because of smartphones and tablets. Now they can use voice commands to look up stuff and type things down on their devices

Don't you have a picnic basket to steal or something....

 

[wolffanghameha]

I saw about this on twitter.
Even as someone who is fine for literacy/numeracy, I'm not stupider than before, but sustaining attention and doing deep reading is harder and less natural than it was once upon a time. I'll read full research papers occasionally and read specialist sources that get into the weeds, but 95% of the time I skim-read. It's not necessarily intelligence. As in, if the issue is attention span, a lot of them could regain the habits of deep learning if they disengage from electronics, short-form news and social media and recalibrate to the slow burn satisfaction of reading long-form text and books. Skim-reading has its place for sure (to find good things to deep read, or to save time), but so does deep reading.

The poor literacy level is worrying. It's still better than the 90s, but trending downwards.

I think maybe another reason, besides social media and online news being so short-form and education focusing less on reading full books/long excerpts of books, is a culture where having opinions and chasing clout is valued over learning or listening and people think they need to have an opinion or are hassled by others if they don't have one. I mean, you shouldn't have an opinion on most things. You should be observing instead, trying to learn. The right to an opinion is not an obligation to have an opinion.
I think FOMO is an issue too - people now are scared to spend a lot of time on one thing, because it's falling behind on other things, like keeping up with trends (consumer or social trends like the latest news stories. Today it's about Ukraine, couple days later about Gaza, then healthcare reform, tariffs or whatever. Not enough time to really spend time reading academic or expert sources, going to your library and reading textbooks or about political philosophy or whatever, to really understand the underpinnings of a topic).
I'm reminded of the poem B. Saitiev liked, by Pasternak, about living authentically and not chasing public acclaim. People (myself included) put too much focus on showing they know things or being actively involved in discussions, rather than spending time truly learning. It's not just social media probably...in 90s China (they've changed since then, according to social science studies), being quiet was seen as a virtue, but in the West it wasn't - in a 1990s Western business meeting, it was good to make sure you say something, but in China this wasn't viewed positively, as staying quiet and listening could be seen as a virtue.
Also the news is often not about education. Education is blended with entertainment - edutainment. The news is blended with drama - he said this, he said that. I can watch/read 500 mainstream news reports over the years about the economy, and still know nothing about economic theory. Tariffs are in the news now - there's no in-depth analysis of tariffs, analysis of what reciprocal really means, what trade deficits are, the pros and cons of trade deficits, how trade deals involve more than just goods/services. The stuff you can find by googling with ".edu" or ".org" as filters or looking at governmental analyses.

People were always dumb though. Gen Xers, boomers and millenials have plenty of people who aren't great critical thinkers (even on the video's graphs, the Xers/boomers have poorer average literacy/numeracy). I think young people are fine for critical thinking, even if they aren't great readers (the vid doesn't seem to show evidence of crit. thinking dropping). You don't need to be a great reader to think critically. Your mind can think critically listening to the radio, watching videos, speaking or just thinking to yourself.

 

[HeffDoesWant]

I know a bunch of people like that. Most of them are women but some men are like that too. Tribal people and other ape species can remember a specific tree to navigate the jungle. Modern people can't remember a road sign with the name of the street on it even if they pass by it on a daily basis.

I'm exactly like that.

If there is no logical reason for something being the way it is i often can't remember it, if i have no reason to remember it I'll never remember it.

For example i cross 2 streets on my way to where I've worked for 6 years, I can name one because I need to get ubers from it, but the other....no idea.

I'm great at maths, problem solving and critical thinking but talk to me about street names and I'll seem retarded. My usual fix is talking in distance and direction, but that's little help to most people (such as my wife).

 

[Berserker13]

I'm exactly like that.

If there is no logical reason for something being the way it is i often can't remember it, if i have no reason to remember it I'll never remember it.

For example i cross 2 streets on my way to where I've worked for 6 years, I can name one because I need to get ubers from it, but the other....no idea.

I'm great at maths, problem solving and critical thinking but talk to me about street names and I'll seem retarded. My usual fix is talking in distance and direction, but that's little help to most people (such as my wife).

Memorizing useless things is a boomer meme

 

[Osculater]

Don't you have a picnic basket to steal or something....

Hey, don't tell me what to do! But can you spare tree fiddy?

 

[Possum Jenkins]

No, many schools do not have tracks at all. There will always be a class for special needs kids. But the rest of the kids are all in groups, not separated by levels. They have paths which group a direction of classes together based on your choice. Some are more humanities, some are more math-oriented paths etc. Many districts got rid of AP classes. Many districts decided to pool all kids together. Simple google search shows it. I have friends in education, so I have been hearing about it for years. Kids have been pushed through that do not deserve it, and others have not been properly challenged. Some of it is budgetary, other times its a philosophy.

Google only shows a few articles and rants of people repeating what you're saying (advanced courses are being eliminated, everyone is on the same track), but I can't find articles of a large school district actually doing it. And I include "large" because in a country of 335 million, you'll find isolated cases of anything. Some tiny high school with 500 students doing something doesn't affect the entire country. But if you're citing this as a contributor to the overall decline of US education, then it must be happening in LOTS of huge districts, affecting tens of millions of kids. Yet I can't find anything.

And it's great that you have friends in education but I myself taught high school for 5 years and didn't see any of what you're saying, not just in my district but in none of the neighboring districts, either. And I live in a big, metropolitan area

 

[SKYNET]

It's almost like keeping young children from attending school and forcing them to zoom in from home over several years during essential growth stages of their life, and despite having a significantly low probability of serious infection or death from covid, was a monumentally stupid and tragic move.

 

[HHJ]

Brycemitchelworldland

 

[SKYNET]

Covid shutdowns have destroyed a generation. Kids were home, and many kids can't learn that way. Teachers had no clue how to handle it. Kids were pushed through and given grades to just finish it.

I personally watched my niece, now age 14, go from a straight A student, honor roll every year from 1st until 5th grade, was a member of several clubs at school, a standout in gymnastics and overall a great young female athlete...
...to not being able to attend regular school due to poor grades, lack of effort and attention, forced into a special ed programs and new age learning is the only way to get her to participate. Her personality has eroded into a teenage basket case, battling depression, has spent several weeks in mental health facilities after ditching my sister/her mother in a Walgreens to raid any over the counter meds and ingest them. Anti-social, barely speaks, has zero interest in maintaining hygiene or her appearance.

All that and she's the middle child. Used to be a big sister model to my youngest niece age 9, now they can't sleep in the same bedroom, my youngest niece is no longer the cheery little girl from 3-4 years ago. My oldest nephew age 16 has essentially left to live with his gf family, he only comes home to eat sleep shower repeat.

Overall my sisters family is going through major disfunction and for the most part they got by the last few years hoping the pandemic haze would wear off. It has and what is left is a broken family and my brother in law and my sister are 5 years younger than me and they both look like they are 10 years older than me.

 

[WINGNUT]

if there was a collapse of society, 85% of people would be completely lost without big brother tending to them and would die off not having someone hold their hand. Its crazy how many people cant even change a fucking car tire. Imagine them trying to actually survive in dire situations . yikes

 

[Berserker13]

seems like being a democrat causes you to become mentally disabled....