The Cognitive Downgrade
America is in cognitive decline. The data is in.
The Numbers Are In…
According to a 2019 report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a staggering 43 million U.S. adults, 1 in 5 adults, possess low literacy skills. Literacy is not about the ability to read complex books or papers; it's about a failure to perform the most basic functions of modern life. These adults struggle to "successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms". They are, in essence, functionally locked out of society. They are unable to fully access the systems that govern modern life.
The economic fallout from this deficit is not insignificant. A 2020 study by Gallup, in collaboration with the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, calculated the cost of this deficiency at a staggering $2.2 trillion in lost GDP annually. This is an economic wound equivalent to 10% of the U.S. GDP, a direct consequence of failing to ensure the population has the basic skills to participate meaningfully in the economy.
This trend is accelerating. The 2023 OECD Survey of Adult Skills reveals that while the U.S. average literacy score of 258 hovers near the OECD average of 260, the share of low-performing adults has actually increased over the past decade. Skill inequality in the United States is among the widest in the developed world, with an enormous gap separating the highest and lowest performers. Brain rot starts early and is getting worse. The most recent national assessments show the largest drop in reading scores for 9-year-olds since 1990.
What makes this modern literacy crisis different from the recurring panics of the past is the nature of the evidence. Previous alarms were based on observation, anecdote, and rhetoric. The question is based on empirical, quantifiable data from neuroscience and economics. We have moved from a debate about cultural standards to a clinical assessment of a national pathology. The question is no longer "Are we getting worse?" but "By how much, and what is the cost to our future?"
Neurological Rot, Fast-Tracked
The analysis I'm putting forward suggests we are not just adopting new tools in the sake of productivity and convenience, but fundamentally altering how we think. Observing the turn towards AI, both personally and in others, shows a clear trend of training our brains for laziness. This convenience, particularly from Large Language Models (LLMs), is not without consequence. It incurs what I am identifying as a real neurological cost, or a 'cognitive debt,' that weakens the essential skills of thought, memory, and creation. We are consistently sold a narrative of AI as a cure-all for productivity that will usher in an era of progress. This story encourages us to dismiss serious concerns about job displacement and social upheaval as simply the next phase of capitalism. The evidence I lay out, however, supports a different reality: the more we outsource our thinking, the less capable we become of it.
The evidence for this cognitive offloading is not theoretical. A study from MIT, "Your Brain on ChatGPT," provides early clues. Using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity during an essay writing task, researchers found that neural connectivity "systematically scaled down with the amount of external support". Participants who wrote using only their brains showed the strongest and most widespread neural networks. Those using a search engine showed intermediate engagement. The LLM group, however, elicited the "weakest overall coupling". This the brain powering down when offered an easy way out.
The study observed significantly reduced connectivity in the alpha band, which is associated with internal attention and semantic processing, and the theta band, linked to working memory and cognitive load. When we outsource our thinking to an AI, we are choosing not to engage the very neural pathways that define deep thought and analysis.
Use it or lose it.
The most damning finding from the study reveals the profound impact of this offloading on memory. An 83.3% of participants in the LLM group failed to provide a correct quote from the essay they had supposedly just "written". This contrasts with the Search Engine and Brain-only groups, where only 11.1% struggled with the same task. This shows that using an LLM is not a collaborative act of creation but a passive act of transcription. The information never passes through the cognitive and memory-encoding centers of the brain, such as the crucial frontal-temporal pathways that are essential for verbal and conceptual integration. The user becomes a glorified automaton for the machine, with no ownership, agency, or recall of the final product. The LLM group's "low perceived ownership" of their essays further supports this during post-task interviews, where some participants denied ownership entirely.
This cognitive outsourcing also leads to a homogenization of thought. The study's Natural Language Processing (NLP) analysis found a "consistent homogeneity" and a high frequency of "common n-grams" in the essays produced by the LLM group. An n-gram is a sequence of n adjacent symbols in particular order. This is the mechanism behind the soulless, generic quality of AI-generated text that the human teachers hired to score the essays independently observed. When we offload thinking, we adopt the machine's most probable, and therefore its most generic, thought patterns. We are sanding down the unique edges of our own ideas to fit the predictable, and ultimately unoriginal outputs of machines.
The less we use our critical thinking and memory encoding circuits, the weaker they become, a fundamental principle of neuroplasticity. As these circuits atrophy, the perceived difficulty of performing cognitive tasks without assistance increases. This, in turn, incentivizes even greater reliance on the very AI tools that caused the decline in the first place. This feedback loop, where cognitive decline drives further use of the tools that cause the decline, leads to an accelerating atrophy of the mind. This has horrible implications for education, where the goal is to build these skills, not bypass them, and for a democratic society that relies on an independently thinking populace. My fear is that AI will spell the "death of critical thinking and writing ability for the upcoming generation" and this is not an exaggeration; it is a rational conclusion based on the evidence presented.
The Many Causes
Pointing the finger at TikTok or a single flawed teaching methodology is an inadequate response to a crisis with deep, interlocking causality. The decline in American literacy and critical thinking is a systemic failure, a perfect combination where a broken education system, corrosive social inequities, and the ease of new technology have merged to create a generation that struggles with the most basic tasks.
The digital pacifier is perhaps the most visible culprit. The problem predates the widespread adoption of ChatGPT. For years, the constant bombardment of notifications and the cultural shift from deep reading to the "doom scroll" of brief texts and social media posts have diminished attention spans and the capacity for sustained focus. We’ve moved away from reading to short form video content. Educational technology, while holding promise, has often devolved into gamified review platforms like "Kahoot!" that rewards speed over reflection. This can create a "cognitive overload" that actually hinders deep learning, as students click frantically for points without absorbing the material. The ubiquity of cell phones in the classroom is a symptom of this broader culture that prioritizes constant, shallow engagement over the discomfort of focused thought.
A pervasive educational crisis underlies the technological advancements of our time. American schools are demonstrably failing in their fundamental purpose. An alarming national teacher shortage affects 86% of public schools (2003), resulting in increased class sizes and a reliance on under qualified, provisionally licensed instructors. This crisis disproportionately impacts vulnerable student populations, including those from low-income backgrounds, students of color, and students with disabilities, as these groups are concentrated in districts experiencing the most acute shortages.
For many years, American education has also been hampered by ideological "Reading Wars," with numerous schools adopting "whole language" or "balanced literacy" methods that lacked empirical support. The recent, widespread embrace of the "Science of Reading" a return to explicit, systematic phonics instruction—implicitly acknowledges these decades of shortcomings. However, even this corrective measure is not a comprehensive solution. Initiatives such as the Virginia Literacy Act, which mandates evidence-based curricula, have drawn criticism for their overly prescriptive nature, potentially undermining teachers' professionalism through scripted programs, and for being inadequate to resolve deeply ingrained issues without consistent support in higher grades. Moreover, even phonics-based instruction can prove ineffective if implemented poorly—without appropriate review cycles, suitable texts, or a seamless transition to multisyllabic words.
Finally, the social contract underpinning public education is broken. You cannot teach a child who is unable to learn. Low literacy and poverty are locked in a vicious, intergenerational cycle; nearly 80% of those living in poverty read at low levels, and their children are far more likely to start school at a disadvantage and lack access to books and other resources.
Chronic absenteeism rates have skyrocketed since the pandemic. At Culpeper Middle School in Virginia, a case study in this decline, chronic absenteeism jumped from 9.7% pre-pandemic to an alarming 30.6% in the 2021-2022 school year, a period that coincided with a sharp drop in the school's English proficiency scores. This crisis is exacerbated by a decline in parental support for literacy at home. This is a reflection of a society where overburdened parents, often working multiple jobs and facing their own economic precocity, may lack the time, resources, or even their own literacy skills to foster a reading-rich environment.
The sheer complexity of this problem, with its interlocking technological, educational, and social causes, means that any proposed silver bullet will fail. A new phonics curriculum cannot overcome a 35-student class size with an unqualified teacher. A new technology platform is useless to a student who is chronically absent due to poverty. The current public discourse, which often seeks a single scapegoat, be it technology, a teaching method, or parents, is a failure of critical thinking in itself. The interdependence of these causes demands a multi-pronged, systemic, and sustained effort, requiring a level of coordinated political and social will that seems entirely absent and in my opinion fabricated.
A Nation of Easy Grades
This is a crisis that manifests in our paychecks, our hospitals, our voting booths, and our homes. A nation that cannot read or think critically is a nation that is poorer, sicker, more divided, and dangerously easy to deceive.
Economic impacts are direct and personal. Low literacy is inextricably linked to lower income and higher unemployment. According to the OECD, a one standard deviation increase in numeracy skills is associated with 9% higher wages. The unemployment rate for adults with low skills is two to four times higher than for those with bachelor's degrees. This isn't just about being poor; it's about being permanently locked out of a modern economy that increasingly rewards cognitive skills.
This cognitive decline also makes people easy financial targets. A 2024 study on cryptocurrency ownership serves as a case study. It found that individuals who use crypto primarily for transactions are significantly less financially literate than non-owners. This group is also more likely to be from a racial minority and have a lower credit score. They are drawn to a high-risk, poorly understood, and largely unregulated asset class, making them exceptionally financially vulnerable. This is the real-world cost of not being able to think critically about risk, information, and financial promises that seem too good to be true. Just think of all of the meme coins and shit coins.
The damage extends to the foundation of our democracy. A population that struggles with literacy and critical thinking is a threat to itself. Such individuals are less likely to participate in civic life and are more likely to believe they have little influence on political processes. They are profoundly vulnerable to disinformation and political polarization, unable to effectively evaluate sources, navigate political echo chambers, or distinguish fact from opinion. The decline of trust in institutions is a direct consequence of a decline in the ability to critically assess them. People who cannot reason fall back on the dangerous comforts of blind belief or its equally unthinking cousin, reflexive contrarianism.
Herein lies a profound irony, as these vulnerabilities are often exploited by ideologues who adopt the language of rebellion to mask their own agendas. Consider the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), a group that casts itself as a brave, anti-establishment force fighting the authoritarian tendencies of "woke" culture. The contradiction emerges starkly with the influence of figures like billionaire Peter Thiel, a key financial backer for IDW-affiliated thinkers. While the IDW rails against the "boot" of ideological control, Thiel is the co-founder of Palantir Technologies, a firm that builds the literal technological infrastructure for mass surveillance and data analysis for government and military agencies. This creates a stunning contradiction: a movement that champions free speech is deeply connected to a powerful figure who profits from the tools of state control, undermining the very individual liberties it claims to defend and preying upon the exact critical thinking failures it purports to solve.
The decline of critical thinking has been actively co-opted and weaponized by political and ideological actors. This cognitive void creates fertile ground for authoritarianism and demagoguery. As the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued, stupid people can be more dangerous than evil ones because "reasons fall on dead ears," rendering them defenseless against manipulation. Political discourse devolves into scapegoating and tribalism rather than problem-solving. People who are worked "to the bone" and overwhelmed by daily life simply do not have the "bandwidth" to care about facts. This creates a populace that is not just uninformed but un-informable, making them susceptible to control. As the comedian George Carlin observed
"Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers"
The well-documented efforts by ideological billionaires to fund and shape university curricula are a real-world manifestation of this principle in action. Stupidity is not just an unfortunate social condition, it has become a powerful political tool.
Beneath these grand societal consequences lies the grinding, daily humiliation of functional illiteracy.
These are not outliers, they are the lived reality for millions of Americans navigating a society whose basic instruction manual they cannot read.
An Invitation to Think, For a Change
Intellectual decline, fueled by instant gratification and algorithmic curation, won't be solved by external fixes. The true cure is demanding, active, critical thinking. This involves questioning, analyzing, synthesizing, and forming independent conclusions, grappling with ambiguity and resisting oversimplification. We must cultivate a culture that rewards critical thinking in education, work, and societal discourse, prioritizing deep understanding, innovative problem-solving, and thoughtful debate. Until we shift from passive consumption to active knowledge creation, and celebrate independent thought, intellectual decline will leave us vulnerable and ill equipped for the modern world.
We have seen many proposed solutions, each promising to be the fix. We have seen technological integration, community involvement programs, and systemic reforms like the Virginia Literacy Act. While often well intentioned, these initiatives frequently fall short because they fail to address the core cultural devaluation of critical thought. Large scale tutoring programs have been shown to have minimal impact on reading scores. Even the much-lauded "Science of Reading" can be rendered ineffective by poor implementation in the classroom. There is no easy fix.
The ultimate solution lies not in a top down mandate but in a bottom up cultural shift. It requires humility, the willingness to admit "I don't know" a trait that researchers find is a hallmark of true intelligence. It requires the courage to accept that we are often wrong and to engage with complexity rather than retreating to the comfort of black-and-white thinking. In a society that increasingly celebrates willful ignorance and mistakes contrarianism for critical thought, the simple act of reading a difficult book, analyzing a source, or questioning one's own biases becomes a form of resistance. The call to "think critically" is not just an educational cause, its a way to navigate the world.
I've come to realize that this cognitive crisis persists because we have, as a society, chosen convenience over cognition. We've outsourced our critical thinking to algorithms and subcontracted our opinions to the tribes we belong to. After observing this, I concluded that waiting for a systemic solution is a mistake. The responsibility to change is not with some policymaker, it is with each of us. The choice to resist this decline is a personal one. That choice is the fundamental reason I am starting to write.