The Flynn Effect

One of the main premises in Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains” is the Flynn effect. The Flynn effect refers to the steady increase in IQ scores the past century. People think the Flynn effect occurred because our technology advanced. The Flynn effect however was in motion before the internet became a mainstream, even before the world wars. Also because of the rapid increase in IQ scores the past century graphs show that the Fathers of America would have to have been significantly retarded, a fact we all know is not true. So if our IQ scores aren’t increasing because of technology how are they increasing? Theories, for the rise of scores, range from a healthier population, smaller households, to a more educated and literate population. While all these are possible factors none are truer than the reason Flynn himself eventually came to understand. “The gains in IQ scores have less to do with an increase in general intelligence then with a transformation in the way people think about intelligence” meaning until the late 1990s only professors and those who attended college had access to real intelligence i.e. Abstract reasoning, classification. “This all changed over the course of the last century when for certain reasons abstract reasoning moved into the mainstream. Everyone began to wear the same ‘scientific spectacles’ that were worn by the original developers of IQ tests.”
Basically this shows that internet technology did not increase our intelligence. if anything our intelligence in some areas has decreased. On the PSAT math scores dropped during the period wear Internet use in houses and schools increased, while on verbal parts of the test, scores declined significantly. Critical-reading, the average writing scores dropped a combined total of 10.2 percent. SAT scores for the verbal sections dropped from college bound students. According to Always on: Language in an Online and Mobile World by Naomi S. Baron “Literary