A recent US Senate Commerce Committee hearing examining technology’s effects on American youth featured testimony from neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath.
During the hearing, he presented evidence suggesting Generation Z has become the first generation in modern history to demonstrate lower cognitive abilities than their predecessors.
Generation Z, often called Gen Z, refers to people born roughly between the late 1990s and early 2010s, making them today’s teens and young adults. They follow Millennials, the generation born from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, who grew up during the rise of the internet.
Dr. Horvath, director of LME Global and a former teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist, delivered findings based on data collected across 80 countries.
His January 2026 testimony outlined significant declines in basic attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive functioning, and general IQ among Gen Z students, despite them receiving more formal education than previous generations.
“Since we’ve been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents,” Dr. Horvath explained to the committee.
He continued: “And that’s exactly what we want. We want sharper kids. And the reason for this largely has been school. Each generation spends more time in school. We use school to develop our cognition. Until Gen Z.”
Horvath stated: ” Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have.”
The timing of this cognitive shift appears significant. According to Dr. Horvath’s research, the decline began around 2010, coinciding with widespread adoption of digital technology in educational settings.
“What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development? It can’t be schools. Schools basically look the same. It can’t be biology. This hasn’t had enough of time to change,” Dr. Horvath stated. “The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning.”
Data from 80 countries reveals a consistent pattern: once nations adopt digital technology widely in schools, student performance drops significantly.
Students using computers approximately five hours per day for learning purposes scored over two thirds of a standard deviation lower than peers who rarely or never used technology at school.
Dr. Horvath emphasized that this represents correlation backed by decades of academic research. “What we really want is causation. To get causation, what you need is academic research and you need mechanisms, explanations for why we’re seeing what we’re seeing. Luckily, we have academic research stretching back to 1962 that shows the exact same story for 60 years. When tech enters education, learning goes down.”
The neuroscientist explained biological mechanisms behind these findings, noting humans have evolved to learn from other humans rather than screens. Digital devices, he argued, circumvent natural learning processes regardless of how sophisticated the educational software may be.
Dr. Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, corroborated these concerns with additional data showing dramatic changes beginning around 2012.
She documented doubling rates of clinical depression among adolescents and young adults between 2011 and 2019, before the pandemic.
“Emergency room admissions for self harm behaviors, which are linked to depression, doubled among 15 to 19 year old girls and young women and quadrupled among 10 to 14 year old girls,” Dr. Twenge testified. “The s**cide rate in these adolescent age groups doubled over that time period.”
The timing corresponds with smartphone adoption reaching majority status and social media transitioning from optional to virtually mandatory among middle and high school students.
Emily Cherkin, author and founder of the Screen Time Consultant, described four interconnected crises: mental health, learning, creativity, and democratic participation.
She noted that 40 percent of two year olds now have personal tablets, while children ages eight to 18 average seven and a half hours daily on screens outside school hours.
“Elementary school children are literally falling out of their chairs in classrooms because they lack the core strength to sit for long periods of time,” Cherkin testified. “One child viewed more than 13,000 YouTube videos in less than three months at school on his school issued laptop.”
Dr. Jenny Radesky, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School, emphasized the design elements driving problematic use.
Her research tracking children’s devices found 99 percent of apps contained at least one manipulative design feature intended to prolong engagement or monetize user time.
“Most digital products used by youth were designed by adults for adults, only retrofitted for youth usage, and harms were recognized,” Dr. Radesky explained. “Tech companies are often designing their products to optimize engagement. So they follow metrics like daily active users, view time, but this is often at direct odds with what we need as parents.”
The witnesses unanimously supported raising minimum ages for social media access and implementing comprehensive phone bans during school hours. Several cited Sweden’s recent decision to prohibit most educational technology for primary years as a model worth examining.
Dr. Horvath concluded his testimony with an analogy about reading comprehension standards. He contrasted traditional tests featuring 750 word passages with inferential questions against current SAT formats presenting single 75 word sentences with factual questions.
“Last year, they redefined reading comprehension to mean 54 short sentences with one question about each. That is skimming. That’s not reading,” he said. “Rather than determining what do we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool. That’s not progress, that is surrender.”
