LIFESTYLE NEWS - Studies suggest IQs are lower among younger people. Charlotte Lytton, 26, asks if older always does mean wiser.
It’s an awkward truth that many have long suspected to be true – young people today are less intelligent than they used to be. According to the first ever authoritative study on the subject, those born in 1991 (which includes me . . .) have IQs lower than previous generations by an average of seven points.
A Norwegian study of more than 730 000 standardised test results found that the decline likely began with those born in 1975.
British studies have found similar results, estimating an IQ drop somewhere between 2.5 and 4.3 points per decade.
However, I’d wager that it’s not academic or mental dexterity that’s dwindling among young people – we’re using the wrong yardstick to measure them.
To be a young person in 2018 is, after all, a more splintered existence than those of generations before.
Perhaps we don’t speak French or German as well as our elders, but we are contending with multiple modes at any one time, be they water-cooler chats or executive-level work e-mails; in abbreviated text-speak or 280 characters on Twitter.
None of these may be delivered with the same flourish of a devastating insult reeled off in perfect Italian – but, as currency in today’s society, they’re surely worth their weight in gold (emoji).
It also does not follow that communicating with small images of an exasperated face or smiley poo robs you of the ability to do so in more traditional forms. And, in the spirit of standardised tests, I went to Mensa’s website to try their “online workout” – a quiz in which you have 12 minutes to answer 18 questions.
I was pitted against Harry de Quetteville, The Telegraph’s special correspondent (technology), who, having been born in 1975, would have avoided the tipping point for the nation’s plummeting intelligence.
The workout is not an IQ test per se and was, even to my far from academic eye, on the simple side.
Still, I felt reasonably pleased with my score of 17 out of 18 – 94% – until I received an e-mail from Harry to say he got top marks. I was let down by my knowledge about lakes.
And worst of all? Harry’s crushing blow was delivered with a single word of millennial slang: “Soz.”
