A study shows Gen Z scores lower on IQ than Millennials and reports higher depression, gambling addiction, and antisocial behavior. Codie Sanchez blames attention-destroying devices that reward quick hits over deep reading, plus AI that reduces the need to think critically. She urges Gen Z to treat intelligence as changeable, take risks, and use technology intentionally instead of letting it use them.
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This is actually fascinating. Gen Z, apparently you're not doing okay. So this new study came out and Gen Z is the first generation to be less intelligent than its predecessor, the millennials. And you know, we're not that bright. And also you have a lower IQ than the prior generation. More likely to be depressed, more likely to be addicted to gambling, more likely to be antisocial, less likely to drink alcohol because that's a win, but less likely to have a relationship and less likely to have children. This isn't just like a shit on Gen Z moment. The question is like, what is going on and how do you change? This literally hurts my heart. I mean, here's my take, I'd be curious yours, but first of these little fucking black boxes that are actually killing us. These are attention destroyers and we've got to spend less time on them because we are addicted to short term rewards. We've got to be careful because it turns out that even in college campuses they're seeing Gen Z come on, on to college campuses and literally not be able to do standard reading comprehension and not able to actually understand some full sentences. So this is actually rotting our brains. And I think it's going to get worse because with AI coming this means that we have to think less and less. I can see it non stop. I can tell immediately if something is made with AI or not. And so I think it's also because life is actually easier even though in many ways it feels harder. Meaning nobody's trying to kill you. Every single day people are telling you that you're less capable than you are, so you're taking less risk than you've ever taken. And I hope I can just like be the older sister kind of yelling at you, saying like, you can change this intelligence is malleable. You need to get out there, take risk, shake things up, get off your phone, talk to humans, do things that suck. Because you know, this generation doesn't, it doesn't need to be the first one that regresses in American history. You can actually be the one that becomes superhuman with this technology. As long as you, you don't let it run you, you need to figure out how to run it.
