Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Here’s All the Research Showing Your Phone Is Probably Making You Dumber

Humanity was up to some pretty dumb stuff in the 20th century. But there’s comfort in one fact: Overall, society appears to be slowly getting smarter. Through the decades and across most of the world, people’s scores on IQ tests were slowly improving. Scientists dubbed this the Flynn effect, the phenomenon of the substantial and consistent rise in average IQ scores.

Unfortunately, it appears to be reversing. Not only does the century-long long climb in IQ scores seem to be over, but new evidence also suggests society is actually getting dumber. And many experts suspect phones are to blame.

The end of the Flynn effect.

To be clear, worries about the end of the Flynn effect predate the widespread use of smartphones. One huge data set, involving IQ tests given to basically every man in Norway over decades, shows intelligence starting to decline there from the 1970s, so much so that each generation appeared to lose around seven IQ points.

This drop even occurred within single families, suggesting it didn’t have anything to do with shifting demographics. Something in the environment appeared to be the culprit, though no one could agree on what. Diet, lack of exercise, pollution, and outsourcing your memory to Google have all been…