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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

The peak was in 2012

           2012  2020  2023
  Reading   263   260   256
  Math      285   280   271

So people are looking at Covid and that's probably not enough. The scores are closer to those of the 80's than those in the 90's and 00's

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My non-controversial theory: It's all the attention-span-shortening stuff.

- tech apps starting with infinite scroll (facebook, 9gag, Instagram, etc.)

- media/tech shortened content: shorter tv shows, short video content, etc.

(Tiktok is the "state of the art" of those 2 trends pushed to the max)

Specifically, we're getting more & more addicted to things that increase the dopamine spikes frequency, making it increasingly difficult to go in deep focus work.

Absolutely, we are feeding kids so much attention-span killing things. Even as an adult I'm having hard time with YouTube shorts, and i cannot imagine a kids brain having the ways to deal with all that.

I am _fighting_ with elderly relatives to adjust their YouTube habits. They didn't even know it comes on autopilot by default. They don't even check sources, they just let the garbage in.

Also the parents using too many attention-span killing things which is hurting the attention they give their children.

I certainly feel several degrees dumber than I did as a teenager without that stuff

I wonder if there's research on short form but educational content or if that's fundamentally impossible.

For example I remember reading a lot of science magazines / articles growing up (granted popsci but for a kid it still teaches some things) and as I grew up things like the Economist.

Similarly I also played games like math blaster as a kid and have realized I need to intentionally provide games like this to my kids that ideally teach something (the bar being greater than zero learning) rather than playing one of those infinite running games or whatever.

I think we're probably talking about the exact same thing but am curious where content vs. short form media is.

Thanks for sharing :)

Last time I dove into its research, I found that Math Blaster had no impact on student learning.

That doesn't line up though. See if you're 13 and meeting the level in 2012 your scores don't decline. So the levels would lag a few years. The 8 year-olds show up and miss the mark in 2017 that indicate the infinite scroll problem was having a toll on them. Additionally this would start to show in class specific measurements (those kids with access to home internet, personal devices, etc. would have worse scores). I think the argument about social media has merit in discussion of children, but it seems more of a social distinction rather than an objective indicator for academic performance.

We don't have any NAEP long-term test results for years between 2012 and 2020, because they were canceled due to budget cuts[1], so we can't use the linked data to determine whether the decline started before or during COVID.

We do have the NAEP main series test results[2]. At a first glance at the math results[3][4], it appears they peaked in 2013, then fluctuated through 2019, then dropped significantly in 2022 and somewhat rebounded in 2024, which really does suggest COVID.

[1]https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/debate-flares-anew-...

[2]https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/report_archive.aspx

[3]https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/202...

[4]https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/mathematics/2024/g...

Could we look at average SAT scores by year as a proxy? It's not a great metric because not all students take the SAT but I think there's some correlation.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-over-time

There was a major change to the SAT design right around the start of the period of interest which seems to have caused scores to jump.

The change was in fact designed to make the scores jump. The purpose is compressing the top scores to allow universities to be more subjective and still have high averages

Demographic change is the obvious explanation.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Anecdotally all the kids these days seem equally messed up. It could be that the Chinese and Indian kids are propping up the locals.

Score changes look about the same across performance percentiles and ethnicities. That suggests it's a systemic issue unrelated to population makeup. While I'd be interested to see regional and economic breakdowns, it's certainly far from obvious it's a result of demographic change, especially after such a short period of time.

Mississippi is one of the recent education success stories though.

2016 is known in meme culture as a the climax of American culture, and I subscribe to this belief too. Everything since then has just gotten dumber and dumber. Not sure if DJT is cause or symptom but I do think the history books will regard 2016 as the beginning of great decline for America. Maybe we will put DJT away but the conditions for his rise to power remain.

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