'Digital natives' first generation with a lower IQ than their parents

That people would suggest screen time, rather than pollution and exposure to chemicals which impact brain development seems unlikely.

BPA, atrazine, PM2.5 air pollution, dozens of chemicals classified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) which are nonetheless present in everyday items and our drinking water.

Assuming humanity survives another couple hundred years, I assume people will look back on our current situation as akin to drinking from lead cups.

I suspect the trend is due to less face to face social interaction, especially fewer conversations. When we converse with other people face to face, their expressions give us additional clues to their intent, which helps boost our learning rate of vocabulary and expression skills.

If you were to have digital natives write the tests instead of those of us from before the internet, they results would likely be inverted. There has been a permanent (unless the net goes away) shift in the way people receive information and store it, there is no need to have long term storage of facts in one's head... google is always there.

There was an interesting comment on /. years ago I can still recall... but young people would have to have it stored in a personal information store to be able to do the same thing.

It took me WEEKS to find it again, even with strong google-fu... but the kid with the PIM would have it (unless of course it got censored into the memory hole).

IQ tests don't measure IQ, they are a reductionist fantasy.

Good news is it won't really matter in the long run if neural prosthesis are a thing. Article should really provide quantitative information on this topic anyway.