Yes, Children Really Are Getting Dumber

It's time to open the Spritzler School for the Gifted. Children will be admitted with only a pencil, a class uniform and the desire not to be jolted by our patented 110 volt shock generator. Keeps it "fresh".

Yes, Children Really Are Getting Dumber

Covid shutdowns, grade inflation and now AI are degrading the quality of American education.

By Allysia Finley, WSJ

Sept. 13, 2026 11:47 am ET

Listening to my 7-year-old nephew sounding out words last week, a dark thought occurred: How long before the three Rs become as outdated among young people as Thomas Guide maps? As machines get smarter, kids are getting dumber.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have been matched by an astonishing decline in student learning. More evidence arrived last week from the Program for International Student Assessment, which measures skills of 15-year-olds around the world every three to four years.

Between 2018 and 2025, reading performance fell in some three-fourths of countries. U.S. math and reading scores fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning and trailed China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., Canada and Australia.

“Most troubling is the decline in the very skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources, and thinking critically about what we read,” the report notes. “The instances of ‘hasty reading’—in which students read quickly but inaccurately—nearly doubled to 9% between 2018 and 2025.”

Adults may be equally guilty of hasty reading, judging by emails that this writer receives. Could Pavlovian ping alerts be fueling a collective attention deficit disorder?

Covid school shutdowns no doubt contributed to the learning loss, though they don’t appear to be the primary culprit, given that scores fell in countries that kept schools mostly open. But there are two common denominators across most countries where scores fell: increasing classroom distractions and reliance on artificial intelligence.

About one-third of students on average in developed countries reported that noise and disorder disrupted lessons, with 29% saying classmates don’t listen to teachers. One in 5 reported that they couldn’t work well because of distractions. Countries where students reported stricter discipline (e.g., Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) experienced small or no learning declines.

As for AI, nearly half of students in economically developed countries say they use chatbots every week. Kids who didn’t use AI for drafting text scored 28 points higher on average than those who used it almost every day—equivalent of 1½ school years. Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it does suggest AI may be becoming a crutch.

“In the same way that we do not become fit by watching sports but by doing sports, learning does not occur through the consumption of content, but as a productive cognitive struggle of the mind with new material,” the report says. “Where technology short-circuits the productive struggle of learning, it will undercut students’ development.”

The latter presents a growing problem in the U.S. and likely other countries. Kids spend much of class playing games and watching videos on devices. Teachers award A’s for no effort. Since many schools have banned homework, kids while away their afternoons on social media where proper grammar and syntax are passé.

According to a Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey published last week, half of high-school students and recent graduates say they use social media during class every day. When devices are supposed to be used for instructional purposes in class, 58% said peers watch videos, use social media or engage in off-task activities.

Are students really to blame? As a result of their less mature brains, kids exhibit less impulse control and self-restraint than adults. Assigning in-class lessons on devices invites kids to rush through them so they can goof off. The result: hasty reading and math.

At the same time, AI is making it easier to succeed in school without putting in the work. Forty-eight percent of students in the Fordham survey admitted to using AI to solve math problems, 36% to summarize books, 29% to write first drafts or essays, and 26% for help during quizzes and tests.

Sixty-two percent agreed that most students are using AI for assignments that are supposed to be completed without it, and 57% said that peers who have done no real work are getting good grades thanks to AI. Academic standards have also eased, with 69% saying they are allowed to retake tests at least once to improve grades.

Grade inflation has become so endemic that 44% of students who scored below 1000 on the SAT—roughly the bottom half—reported receiving all or mostly A’s. The College Board in 2024 shortened SAT reading passages and the exam itself to help kids with short attention spans.

Because of this dumbing down of education, “in a world increasingly flooded with information, our students are less likely to think deeply and separate signal from noise,” PISA reports. Politicians and so-called AI doomers are sounding alarms that AI could destroy humanity. The clearer and more present danger is that young minds, liberated from work and struggle, turn into slop.