Is Gen Z Smart?

Gen Z: the generation of good vibes and immaculate energy, bold enough to strive for generational change yet too scared to go out and make friends. Gen Z is an enigma, with previous generations and media constantly perplexed by their behavior. They are the most sex positive while also having the fewest sexual partners, the most mentally ill, and yet are the biggest promoters of mental health. This generation, of which I am a proud member, is all over the place, which undeniably makes us the most fun. It’s like dating a crazy partner (you see how I used the word “partner” instead of boyfriend or girlfriend, take note Gen X), you never know what is going to happen, and that’s what makes us the most exciting to be around. We could sit here and talk about Gen Z for hours, but I want to focus on one topic: Is Gen Z actually smart? I think we are constantly viewed as brainfried TikTok dopamine addicts (of which many are) who spend our lives just complaining, but what does the data actually tell us? Is Gen Z cooking, or are we cooked?

IQ, or better known as Insecurity Quotient (I’m just kidding, we all know it stands for Intelligence Quotient), has been a controversial metric used for decades to gauge problem-solving, memory skills, and academic placement for some students. Since the 1930’s up until the end of the 20th century, the average IQ of an American has increased about three to five points per decade, commonly known as the “Flynn effect.” This gain has typically been attributed to increased educational access throughout the 20th century and to other factors, such as nutrition. However, a 2023 study by Northwestern University, examining large samples from 2006 to 2018, found a reversal of this paradigm, with scores remaining stagnant or declining in some areas. Their study suggests that verbal reasoning, matrix reasoning, and letter and number series have decreased in the population, with the largest impact on 18-22 year olds and people with lower education, which would comprise Millennials and the early portion of Gen Z, given the timing of the study. Surprisingly, however, three-dimensional rotation scores increased from 2011 to 2018, which, in all honesty, I think can be attributed to people learning how to crank 360’s in Call of Duty (but this is not backed up by any real evidence though lol).

While this study suggests that IQ scores in certain areas have been decreasing, it does not include adolescent scores, which could yield other meaningful interpretations, especially among Gen Z. Further research is underway but is currently limited in scope. Many people are especially eager to hear about the impact of IQ on Post-COVID-19 students, but those results are still pending.

However, I personally err on the side of caution when analyzing IQ scores. While new public sentiment and research advocates that IQ is only a small piece of the human puzzle, comprising a fraction of general human intelligence, for decades, it was used as a tool for discrimination and racism, upholding the idea of white superiority. I’m going to go down a little history rabbit hole for a little bit, so bear with me, but I think it’s something critically important to understand in the context of IQ scores and American History.

The real origin of the IQ test came from a French scientist named Alfred Binet, who wanted to develop a test to help identify French students with disabilities so they could receive individualized support in school. His work was published in 1905 and later revised in 1908 and 1911. However, the eugenics movement in early 20th-century America was gaining large traction in academic, prestigious, and government settings (made up almost entirely of elite white men), and they were actively looking for “science-based” support for their selective breeding and discrimination. A prominent eugenicist, Henry H. Goddard, translated Binet’s test into English and used it to promote the idea of immutable intelligence. In case you were wondering, Alfred Binet did not fuck with his test being used this way, saying, “The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of the intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.” These “scientists” were just using it as a means to exploit their backwards ideology.

​Goddard used this IQ scale to show that immigrants who were not as proficient in English had lower intelligence (even though this was not true) and pushed for government legislation to prevent southern and eastern Europeans, as well as Asian populations, from entering the country. In Goddard's pathetic bitch-ass words, “immigration of recent years is a decidedly different character from early integration … We are getting the poorest of each race.”

While Goddard didn’t personally pass eugenics anti-immigration laws, others in his circle actually did. A little loser known as Harry Lauglin was the creator of the Eugenics Record Office and a 1930’s nazi fascist sympathizer. University of Missouri special archives report states that he was deemed “as the ‘Expert Eugenics Agent’ to the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. Under Laughlin’s guidance, the Committee recommended - and Congress passed - the Johnson-Reed Immigration Restriction Act of 1924.” This act essentially barred any Asians from immigrating into the U.S and based immigration quotas at 2% of each nationality on the 1890 census rather than the 1920 census to prevent immigration from Italy, Poland, and Russia.

It wasn’t just immigration being targeted, but minority Americans and people with disabilities as well. Goddard, along with another bitch-ass named Lewis Terman (who was the one who most popularized the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test), used this scale to justify that people of color were less intelligent than others. Most of the questions relied on verbal skills or were influenced by middle-class values, so people who lacked a proper education, which many people of color did during this time, were deemed inferior. These intelligence tests were propagated into the U.S. army to determine assignments and work of new recruits, with tests placing 89% African Americans and 47% of Eastern Europeans descent as "morons" but only .2% of German origin being placed in this category. These biased tests consistently perpetuated segregation laws within the United States, leading again to limited access to education for people of color and continuing the narrative that people who were not white were intellectually inferior.

This movement, rooted in IQ scores and biased examinations, led to the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 (based on Harry Laughlin's work), which was upheld by the Supreme Court and became a prominent model for other states. People in mental institutions, prisoners, sex workers, and minorities were often the target of such legislation, leading to the sterilization of over 60,000 Americans. After the discovery of the holocaust, the eugenics movement became less prominent in American culture, but still had devastating effects on minorities, immigrants, and people with disabilities for years to come.

While IQ testing has become less biased over the years, with people recognizing that it does not comprise the entirety of someone’s intelligence, it’s important to understand the roots and history of these scores. Don’t get me wrong, it's also critically important to know that the IQ scores are decreasing among young adults, but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other types of metrics as well.

Knowing now that IQ is not really a tangible way to determine whether people are getting “dumber,” what other metrics can we look at? Well … what about math and reading? Well, uh, you see, Gen Z is actually getting cooked here. The 2024 National Report Card from the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that reading scores among 12th graders decreased for all students from 2019 to 2024, and they are at their lowest score since 1992 across all percentiles except the 90th, which is only 2 points ahead. Math, unfortunately, is following a similar pattern here. Math scores are down across all students since 2019, and all but the 90th percentile are lower than in 2005.

Many attribute these decreases in math and reading scores to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is a little more nuance to the story. While the pandemic for sure hit kids hard, causing the sharpest decrease in scores seen in many years, reading and math scores peaked around 2015 and steadily decreased for the 10th, 25th, and 50th percentile students through 2019, losing about 2-3 points over those four years.

The decrease has been attributed to several factors. Some researchers suggest that increased screen and media time has shifted attention and pleasure away from reading, leading to lower reading scores. Others suggest that the more relaxed testing standards after the expiration of the “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2015 and the Passage of the “Every Student Succeeds Act” in 2015 could have contributed to this decrease. Regardless of the reason, we need to start figuring out what is going on and fast, or how else is Gen Z going to read unmatched literature like Ice Planet Barbarians? Most of my Gen Z brethren probably didn’t even make it to this part of the article, which makes me kinda sad to think about 😔😭.

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Okay, so Gen Z really doesn’t seem to be doing too hot when it comes to math, reading, or IQ, but if TikTok has told me anything, it is that we, unlike our parents or Boomers, are the most emotional and vulnerable generation, so that means we must have the biggest EQ of all time, right … right (Imagine my voice is getting higher here)? Well, this, unfortunately, is where your TikTok psychologist is wrong. The 2024 State of the Heart Report from The Emotional Intelligence Network found that, between 2019 and 2023, Gen Z's emotional intelligence decreased compared to other generations. While the global EQ score across generations dropped about 5%, the impact was greatest on Gen Z, where scores across all EQ competencies declined. Specifically, the biggest drops were in the ability to navigate emotions, engage intrinsic motivation, and pursue noble goals. Like fuck guys, not only are we getting worse at tests, but we are also getting worse at explaining our emotions too, we are literally turning into our grandparents. We don’t want to be like Elsa from Frozen, “conceal don’t feel” did not end up panning out super well in that movie.

One interesting point from the study is the widening Gender Gap in EQ. Between 2019 and 2021, EQ among men and women decreased at about the same rate, with women maintaining an EQ edge over men. However, in 2021, there was a shift: women’s EQ increased and stabilized between 2021 and 2023, while men’s continued to decrease, creating one of the largest EQ gaps in years between the two. I won’t spend the rest of this article diving deep into the EQ split between men and women (maybe I’ll save that for another time), but damn, Twitch and Kick Streamers really are keeping men’s EQ at an all-time low.

Your honor, based on the evidence set before me, I must charge Gen Z of being intellectually cooked and sentence them to a year of reading. In all seriousness, the intellectual and emotional declines in almost all categories of Gen Z are a rather disturbing phenomenon. Seeing that many in my generation are not meeting the same standards they used to makes me a little disheartened. While Gen Z is a truly hardworking and talented generation, their stunted growth in many areas seems to reflect failures in education, politics, and social media at the national and, to some extent, global levels. While I have faith that we can bring the latter half of Gen Z and Gen Alpha on the right course, it’s going to take a lot of restructuring, planning, and leadership to bring everyone back. But if that happens, I promise you, Gen Z won’t be cooked; it will be back in the kitchen saucing everyone up.