Mmmm, I see the force of your argument for the first part.

Not sure I agree with the second; I think the form that our intelligence takes is changing, rather than disappearing altogether.

Older generations have much higher focusing abilities, yes, but the newer ones have much higher multitasking abilities.

Plus, if you look at old newspaper articles (from 200 years ago or so), people have been complaining that "people are getting more stupid!" since there *were* newspapers.

There's a measurable simplification of grammatical structures and shrinkage of usable vocabulary, but there's also expansion in other areas; people are still capable! We're just capable of different things, because what is being demanded of us has changed.

Oh, of course things have been changing for so long.
I actually have at work a quote from a Umberto Eco essay at hand, whenever another fellow teacher mentions our students attitude towards life I bring it out. And everybody just agrees, and then I say "But this was written in 1964! It's not about them, it's about my parents!"
XD

Which only shows we have been going down for so long.
Because, yes, when I read I book I hardly never give it much though, or analize the author. I usually can't discuss books the way people did two hundred years ago.

But we've reached a point in which most teenagers can't read a book and understand it at all.
I recently found in a psychology book that most of them read in "E". Meaning the read the first line, one line in the middle and last line of a paragraph. Which of course leads to a very bad comprehension.
And that's the ones who care to read it!

Same thing happens with other media btw.
I tried to watch Chernobyl with students last year, and they can't keep their attention on the screen for 45 minutes. They have to grab the phone several times.

Also it's got an important impact in something else: They have much less of a critical point of view on anything, because they their lack of deep understanding does not allow them too.
Like, a few months ago, I asked my 15-16 years old students how should be the school. What should be taught, how should it be organized.
They are not old enough to propose anything, but they are the right age to say "we should not have school at all!" or "we don't need maths, all we want is sports".
Now the shrug and simply don't care v_v




And... I don't believe in multitasking.
It's just a way of doing several things poorly at the same time.

Aaand the Candy Caravan is back!

@Amura, You would hate me. At work I regularly multitask between games on my tablet or phone, all the while translating or doing QAs.

And if that thing about reading at "E" level is true, then that's utterly terrifying, if I'm understanding my cursory Google search correctly.

EGGS AND DONUTS!!

A random quote that may mess with some of those posting here. "Everything worth doing is worth doing badly!"

@Moon Star:
I would most definetely hate working with you xD
I need focus.


That way of reading, I don't know, I've read it they do it.
I do it myself sometimes, when I'm searching for something - recently published a hundreds of pages new regulation, and needed to figure out some stuff, so I skimmed them. But it's not my usual reading.
Apparently the youngest readers do it so they can read faster.


Recently I'm very angry with Youtube algorithm.
I sometimes watch movie trailers, so I know of movies and maybe I decide to watch some of them. Trailers are quite bad now (it's not new, has been going on for years) because they tell too much. But well, because I don't watch the movie right away it's ok.
But Youtube keeps recommending me movie recaps. I clicked on the first one I saw, thinking it was some kind of review - but no, it was just a 15 minutes summary. And now Youtube suggests me more and more of those videos.
I've blocked just so many of those channels already and the algorithm does not get the hint ¬¬

But why are there so many of those channels anyway? How does that have an audience at all? There are so many people looking forward not watching a movie, just knowing what it's about?
I'm probably getting too old for this world!



@Rehgai:
But that's a completely different matter. It refers to the fact that you should not let imperfection being an obstacle for doing something.
Not that you should do it badly on purpose xD

I fucked up someone's youtube and apple play althigorims by having them watch a YouTube video on my phone once

Wildly enough mine doesn't really get thrown off by a random here and there video

Yeah, I sometimes wander a bit off and that's ok.
The algorith suggest a few strange videos afterwards but if I don't watch more of those it stops suggesting them.
This time I got as far as blocking entire channels, and this stuff (from other channels I suppose) keeps appearing in my main page ¬¬

Annoying.

Makes you wonder if the recommendation is being skewed by paid stuff

I don't think so?
I mean, one paid recommendation yes, but so many of them?

It could be one paid recommendation pushes the related subject(s) up significantly more