Imate intelegent4/24/2023 ![]() Another prominent activity is social media interaction. Others might be watching films, and fairly rigorous studies show that films do not affect cognition adversely and may have positive effects on wellbeing. What is GenZ doing on their phones anyway? Do we know? Many are gaming, and studies point out cognitive and even mental health benefits of this activity. A recent study by German psychologists concludes that “despite growing literature on adverse effects, it should be kept in mind that general smartphone use may also have beneficial effects on certain processes of attention, inhibition, and working memory”. Popular media and intuition might make us want to ban phones, of course they are bad! But studies are contrasted and struggle to find a clear response. The narrative here is that by removing certain forms of technology, students will spend more time on other areas, such as speaking with one another, reading and engaging with deep ideas. This is the idea that technology is to blame and that, therefore, phones should be removed from young people because they are addictive and pernicious for their learning. One response to this situation is panic, perhaps more specifically technopanic. What does all of this mean for those of us in schools and universities. Nonetheless, if we add this overall trend to the learning gaps that Covid-19 has created, the future looks bleak.Īre we essentially headed to a future where people are less intelligent? Multiple studies have shown that attention spans are decreasing (we are being compared in attention span to Goldfish at present, although this is contested), more and more children are being diagnosed with hyperactivity and attention deficit (although, as Ken Robinson pointed out wryly in his famous Changing Paradigms lecture, this might be because of increased screening). We also know now with relative confidence that multitasking, something we all seem to be doing (how many times did you check your inbox or social media posts till you got to this paragraph?) is not only impossible, it is a waste of mental energy. As algorithms are used to determine analytical decisions in law, medical diagnoses and trading, replacing executive neocortical brain function, humans seem to be falling behind. After all, it stands to reason that the “smarter” the technology, the less solicited our psychic energy and mental application. That diminishing IQ scores seem to correlate positively with rising power in technology tempts one to see a causal link. This study has controlled for a number of variables and means that we can say with some confidence that the cause of this decline is probably environmental. An important 2018 study in Norway showed that scores are dropping at many different levels, within families and across generations. However, some studies in the early 2000s showed that scores were in decline and, even though others showed general improvements recently as 2015, today, reports of IQ scores dropping are widespread and less contested. A number of intuitive explanations were given by Flynn: literacy rates were steadily improving, more and more children were receiving a formal education, people were becoming used to the tests, nutrition was improving and the general environment was seen to be more and more stimulating. Successive score captures on well-known tests such as the Weschler test, Raven’s Progressive Matrices or the Stanford-Binet intelligence test were getting better as they were measured through time. The New Zealander cognitive scientist James R Flynn noticed that, on average, IQ test scores increased steadily from their first iterations until at least the 90s. One would think that in the knowledge economy of the age of information, with higher literacy rates than ever in history, human beings would be more intelligent than ever. In other words, what do we actually do with the data? Are we able to extract valuable knowledge from it? The chorus in TS Eliot’s play The Rock asks, mournfully, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”. Ridiculous-sounding names like zettabytes (of which it is predicted there will be 175 in circulation in 2025) are used to describe data volume and there is no end to the analogies used to describe just how much of it there is:175 zettabytes stored on DVDs would circle the earth 222 times, there are 40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe and so on.īut massive amounts of data in circulation does not mean that we are necessarily any wiser for it. With the endless barrage of information hitting us 24 hours a day, permanent online “connection” and ever-unfolding social media discussions, we are very much in the age of big data.
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