Social media is making humanity lose its ability to think, study finds

Illustrative photo: infoline

According to the international PISA study, the results of which were published by the Financial Times, humanity is moving towards intellectual degradation. In the article “Has Humanity Passed Peak Intelligence?”, published on March 14, 2025, scientists note that people’s ability to concentrate and solve new problems has been declining since the early 2010s.

Data from the international PISA study show that school performance in math, reading and science peaked around 2012 and then began to decline, with the decline starting even before the pandemic.

The proportion of high school students who report difficulty thinking, concentrating, or learning new things in the Monitoring the Future study remained stable throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but began to rise rapidly in the mid-2010s.

Similar trends are seen among adults, with declines across all age groups. More and more people are having trouble concentrating, thinking critically, and learning new things. In high-income countries, a quarter of adults cannot use mathematical logic to verify information, and in the U.S., the figure is as high as 35%. Interest in reading is also falling: about half of Americans have not read even one book in a year.

The graph shows how the proportion of adults who have difficulty processing information is growing.

Scientists attribute this to changes in the way we interact with information. We read less and less meaningful texts and analyze data, preferring short, fast-paced visual media. This is a shift from independent behavior to passive consumption and constant task switching. An endless stream of notifications and endless news feeds lead to passive information absorption and a decrease in the ability to think deeply.

Earlier, the Union of Orthodox Journalists wrote that the Vatican issued instructions for nuns on the use of social networks.

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