George Orwell once wrote that every generation “imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it”.
Today, the second part of that observation feels more astute than ever, as we face constant concerns about the ways modern technology is supposedly destroying the minds and cognitive abilities of children and young people.
For decades, scientists have noted the occurrence of the Flynn effect, which essentially describes how, in terms of performance on various tests, each generation is more intelligent than the previous one. In recent years, this…
