Researchers have offered up to five possible explanations for this decline: a ceiling effect (intelligence has a natural ceiling), the quality of education may have declined, the importance of different skills may have changed, or exposure to media and technology are responsible for these lower scores.
In other words, it is possible that the IQ has been decreasing due to the low quality of the content that we consume on social networks and TV (divided between hoaxes and TV junk of influencers illiterate, foxes middlings and ball kickers) that has negatively affected our ability to focus, solve problems and be creative.
The French film director Claude Chabrol already said it: stupidity is infinitely more interesting than intelligence, because intelligence has its limits and stupidity does not.
I was recently reading in The country an interview with Adela Cortina, professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy who said that “the media are creating a society of polarized fools.” People are unable to read an entire book, but they don’t let go of their mobile. They read bits and butterflies, forming a fragmentary and dangerous thought. And since we think the same as we read, as psychologically proven, we think less and less. Attention deficit is no longer a disease, but a way of life fueled and reinforced by addiction algorithms. And if you’re not careful, the guy with the cell phone also runs over you.
Undoubtedly, if there is a supply of junk content, it is because there is no shortage of addicted consumers. So the real fault lies not with so much chachachá, but with the viewers who co-produce it, amplify it and make it profitable. How to ask the media for another type of content in these circumstances? And how to ask brands not to invest in cha-cha-chá advertising?
Kant rightly said that education is together with the government the most difficult task of a country. And we must decide if we educate for the present or for a better future. He was of the opinion that we must educate for a better future where everyone is respected and every human being has the dignity of him. And it’s true: the media (new and old) is creating a society of polarized fools, so we don’t live in a knowledge society, but rather in an attention economy for the quirky and flashy.
The future is always uncertain. We educate in the uncertainty of how to prepare young people so that one day they can respond to life. I believe that you have to situate the viewer, the reader and the listener of the radio, especially the youngest, and you have to give them context and contrast with the rigor of the facts, verification and transparency as reference ideals. The ‘what’ matters, but above all the ‘why’, just as Aristotle wrote in his ‘Metaphysics’.