The familiar story is that each generation becomes better educated and more capable than the last. For much of the past century, rising literacy, IQ scores, and academic performance appeared to support it. Recent assessment results have made that story less tidy.
Recent discussions sparked by a written testimony submitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath presented evidence suggesting that Generation Z may be the first modern generation to show stagnation or decline in core academic skills compared to the cohort before it. The claim is not rooted in cultural pessimism or nostalgia. It draws on large-scale international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS, which track literacy, mathematics, and science performance, as well as problem-solving abilities, across countries, particularly in the United States and parts of Europe.
The pattern is this: despite spending more years in formal education and having unprecedented access to information, many Gen Z students are showing stagnation or decline in core cognitive skills like sustained attention, deep reading comprehension, and complex reasoning.
What changed in the classroom
One structural shift distinguishes Gen Z from earlier cohorts: the rapid and often uncritical expansion of digital technology in education.
In countries like the United States, classrooms over the past two decades underwent a major technological transformation. One-to-one laptop programmes, tablets, cloud-based homework systems, digital assessments, and adaptive learning platforms became widespread. The assumption was straightforward: more technology would translate into better learning outcomes.
Emerging research suggests that heavy classroom screen exposure does not consistently improve performance, and in some contexts correlates with weaker outcomes, especially in deep reading and sustained reasoning tasks. Studies comparing screen-based reading with paper reading often find stronger comprehension and retention on paper. Similarly, handwritten note-taking tends to promote deeper cognitive encoding than typing.
The device itself is not the whole problem. Many digital platforms reward quick switching, notifications, and constant novelty, while difficult learning requires sustained attention. Putting a lesson on a screen does not automatically improve it.
This is where HCI becomes useful. An interface shapes what is easy to do. If a learning environment makes scrolling, switching tabs, and divided attention effortless, students will practise those behaviours alongside the lesson.
Then came Covid
If digital transformation was gradual in many Western classrooms, Covid-19 compressed years of change into months worldwide.
Overnight, classrooms shifted online. Students across the globe, Bangladesh included, spent months, sometimes years, learning primarily through screens. Remote classes, recorded lectures, WhatsApp assignments, Zoom sessions, and online assessments became the default mode of instruction.
For many students, especially in developing countries, the shift was uneven. Some struggled with device access and connectivity; others faced learning environments at home that were not conducive to sustained study. Teachers were forced to adapt rapidly, often without adequate training in digital pedagogy.
What stood out to me was not only the extra screen time. A video call also removed much of the interaction around a lesson: gestures, side conversations, peer reactions, and the cues of a shared classroom. Content still arrived, but the setting in which students made sense of it became thinner.
Globally, post-pandemic assessments show widened learning gaps and declines in reading and mathematics performance. While Bangladesh lacks the same depth of publicly available longitudinal cognitive data, educators increasingly report challenges around attention span, deep reading, and sustained engagement.
These results have many causes, so screen use should not become a convenient single explanation. Still, it is reasonable to ask what habits our learning tools encourage. Attention is limited, and students get better at whatever an environment asks them to practise.
Bangladesh entered through the phone
Bangladesh did not follow the same path of structured, device-per-student classroom integration seen in the US. Our digital shift has been more informal and mobile-first.
For many students, technology entered education not primarily through institutional laptop programmes but through smartphones, coaching apps, YouTube lectures, Facebook study groups, and Zoom classes, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The route was different, but Bangladeshi students also ended up in a learning environment mediated by screens. Short videos supplement lessons, notes circulate through messaging apps, and exam preparation can happen inside algorithmic feeds that are also built for entertainment.
Interestingly, some platforms that began as fully digital ventures are now expanding into physical learning spaces. 10 Minute School, once primarily an online education platform, has introduced physical classroom models and hybrid formats. That evolution suggests digital convenience cannot entirely replace embodied, in-person instruction.
A worse question than "Is Gen Z less intelligent?"
Calling Gen Z "less intelligent" turns a question about education and technology into an insult. This generation is digitally fluent and quick at navigating complicated information spaces. Those abilities are real. They are also different from deep reading or sustained reasoning.
The concern raised by recent research is structural: are our educational systems, across both developed nations and emerging economies, optimizing for engagement rather than cognition?
For Bangladesh, where demographic advantage is often framed as our strongest economic asset, the stakes are high. Digital literacy is essential. But so are patience, analytical reasoning, and the capacity to engage deeply with complexity.
Technology can support learning, but only when a tool is chosen for a learning goal rather than for the appearance of modernity. The useful question is not whether an entire generation is falling behind. It is whether our classrooms, apps, and assessment systems give students enough practice at sustained thought.