Are New Generations Smarter

Zach Olson

In this article, James Flynn talks about the increasing IQ's in the newest generation. Each generation's IQ score is gradually getting higher and higher. "The average IQ of schoolchildren in 1900 was around 70, which is to suggest, bizarrely, that a century ago, the United States was populated largely by people who today would be considered mentally retarded" (Gambino. par.4). The IQ scores are drastically increasing with each generation by 9 points. I personally think that this is because of technology. Technology lets people exchange information very, very easily, which lets young people get access to a lot of information that teenagers in the past did not have the ability to do. The argument is the question that are new generations going to keep getting smarter and are we smarter than our ancestors. James Flynn says that our minds are just more modern. We study different things than people did 100 years ago, so our brains think a little differently. He compares our brains between now and then to a body builder's muscles and a swimmer's muscles. He says that they both use muscles, but in different ways just like people now and then use their brains, just in different ways. Vocabulary can depend on the number of children you have or how other teenagers are talking. Technology can change someone's vocabulary because when people text, they tend to shorten words so that they do not have to type as much, but also get the point across to the reader. This can be a problem because that is the way people start to talk permanently and that is not how it should be. Teenagers start to use slang and young people need to know when it is okay to use slang and when it is not okay to use it because it can make a difference. James says that the parent to kid ratio in a family can make a difference on vocabulary. He says that kids in smaller families have a better vocabulary, because in larger families, the kids feed off of each other and talk like each other, but in smaller families, the kids tend to listen to their parents more and feed off of what they say and how they talk, which is how young adults and kids should talk.