The cognitive slide of GenZ
Is it due to technology? Or is it due to biomechanics?
My dad sent me this video below over the weekend.
It’s by a former teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning.
He starts the clip by boldly saying: “Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age.”
GenZ is scoring more poorly on everything from attention to memory to IQ. Even though they go to more school.
He starts crossing off other possible explanations (eg. says that it cant be biology since it’s too short a time period, etc).
And concludes that its the digital tools that are available in school today. Essentially he is blaming the slide on digital technology.
As if this is some big coverup by ‘Big Tech’ which is victimizing our youth.
I rolled my eyes. Because I think he’s completely wrong.
I am very confident it is biomechanics.
What i’ve learned from observing my 11-year old son
I feel like observing my son (who now has pretty good biomechanics) has given me an inside view into both GenZ and Gen Alpha. Note that he was born in 2014 and Gen Alpha officially starts from 2013.
That said I see lots of GenZers in his high school plus I work with a number of them (up to age 29 is considered GenZ).
And what I noticed with my own son is that yes… he indeed uses his iPad a ton, plays a lot more online games than i did when i was his age (I was playing the old school Nintendo back then), and watches a ton of Youtube (whereas in the 80’s I’d watch sitcoms like “Family Ties” and “The Cosby Show”.
All-in-all he does spend a lot more time on a screen than i did and also spends a lot less time on his homework (but I was a nerd and he is not).
His cognitive function, however, is solid in my view.
For example, I played on my high school chess team and was the #1 board for three years in a row. My son, however, beats me almost half the time these days and I don’t really think i play any worse than i did in high school (as my brain works quite well these days).
Also I can see him figuring tons of things out on the fly as he is playing his networked video games.
So my experience observing him is that he is lazier than i was, spends more time on screens than I did, but he is just as sharp.
I also think times have changed
By this I mean that when I was in school getting good grades was a pretty secure path to a solid job and career.
When I graduated college in 1999 I had about five high paying job offers from a mix of consultancies and investment banks.
This has changed massively with all the layoffs in the past couple of decades. Stable careers are few and far between these days.
And so I do not see kids these days having nearly as much faith in traditional careers. Most of them have seen how that has NOT worked out very well for their parents.
And many of the successful role models they see on Youtube (eg. MrBeast, etc.) were not the ones that got good grades. Rather they were the ones who were also playing lots of games and learning to make money from what they’re passionate about.
So my point here is… I don’t think kids see the point of studying and getting good grades nearly as much as my generation did. And so this naturally hits their motivation.
The generational slide
The biggest thing I have noticed among the younger generation is how they are often more biomechanically impaired than my generation was.
Particularly if they come from places like the US.
Why is that?
Well I’d already written my hypothesis about that in this article:
Basically each generation gets a bit worse because a compensated mother likely compensates the child while still in the womb.
And so while you don’t genetically ‘inherit’ biomechanical collapse… you do potentially physically sort of inherit it.
And how I see this manifest itself in these youngsters is across numerous dimensions:
They are generally ‘softer’ (ie. less confident, etc)
They focus and retain information worse
They are more prone to emotional swings and things like depression
They have poorer attention to detail
etc.
But do I think this stems from them having had more access to digital tools?
No. I think it’s almost completely about biomechanical collapse.
My own little ‘experiment’
I like using my company as my own little science experiment.
I offer a free Reviv to everyone in the company. Some accept and use it while others don’t.
Then I mentally sort of track the trajectory of folks over time.
And I pretty consistently can tell that the folks are wearing the Reviv in a disciplined way are clocking up in terms of attention to detail, how efficient they are, etc.
Whereas the folks who politely declined are the ones who I see making little to no progress (sorry to those of them who are reading this but this is straighttalk haha).
Some of the ones that declined are far more educated and experienced than the ones who use it. And so while they might have a naturally higher IQ and ability to deal with complexity…. it often doesn’t give them an advantage on things like their attention to detail and productivity.
And I can proudly say that despite the fact that I just turned 49 yrs old and am ~2x older than most of my team members… I more than hold my own with all of them in terms of productivity, focus and attention to detail.
Why?
Because what i’ve learned the past decade is that it’s not about age. It’s about biomechanics and trajectory of biomechanics (eg. I’m improving very quickly).
Closing thoughts
Once you start to see the world through my lens you start noticing just how often you see conclusions that are based on correlation rather than causation.
Today’s article is just another example.
Neuroscientist blames technology on the cognitive slide that has happened the last couple of generations.
But completely misses what I consider to be the true root cause - BIOMECHANICS.
And because biomechanics so directly influences so many things… you see this same exact pattern across tons of fields.
For example why have things like ADHD, depression, obesity, and neurological disease ramped up?
Same thing… biomechanics.
How will I be proven correct one day?
Simple.
One day these biomechanics will be understood and leveraged by almost everyone and you’ll see all of these issues that we’d blamed on other things start magically clocking back up. Mark my words ;)