AI has taken a toll on kids brains removing technology from the classroom will fix that

Is it the end of the Flynn effect? Decades ago, the researcher James Flynn recognized a secular increase in IQ scores around the world that amounted to humanity getting smarter all the time. Now, technology appears to be pushing the other way. The new results are in from a 2025 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development test of teenage educational achievement around the world, and it looks like the Flynn effect in reverse. “Learning outcomes have stagnated or declined in many countries, in some cases for well over a decade,” according to the OECD. It’s a mistake to put too much weight on any one imperfect test, but the OECD assessment matches up with other data.There are various theories for what accounts for the slide, but it overlaps with the advent of ubiquitous smart phones, universal access to social media and the rise of AI. As one would expect, reading has suffered most.

Average reading scores dropped nearly 30 points in OECD countries over the last decade.This amounts to about a year of schooling; in other words, 15-year-olds are now reading at roughly the level of 14-year-olds. That the trend is so widespread suggests that the cause is also widespread — and the new technology, which has penetrated everywhere, fits the bill. In not-exactly-shocking news, the OECD found that AI and other digital tools had downsides: “Students tended to perform less well when use became excessive or when devices were used for leisure at school.” The share of so-called hasty readers, who skimmed and then made mistakes on the test, increased sharply — a tendency one would expect in an era of social-media scrolling. Some nations did better than others.

England fared relatively well, probably because it has been relatively immune to faddish theories of instruction. The US ranked in the middle of the pack, even though its reading scores are close to a quarter-of-century low. What to do? First, someone should take a sledgehammer to every comp...