May 18, 2009, 02:15 PM ET

The Young British Mind in Decline

A few months back, the Telegraph reported a distressing finding: IQ scores for British teens are going down. In the last 30 years, it says, the IQ of the average 14-year-old has dropped two points, and for the upper half it has dropped six points.

That’s an astonishing reversal of the so-called Flynn Effect, one of the most cited and discussed phenomena among cognitive psychologists and intelligence experts. The effect is simple: For decades, IQ scores have been steadily rising around the globe. Psychologist James Flynn discovered the rise back in the 1980s, and people in the cultural sphere have cited the effect as evidence against those gloomy cultural conservatives who have claimed that society is going down the drain of TV sitcoms, rap music, and MySpace.

Here is what is troubling about the research: It was conducted by Flynn himself. Here, Flynn attributes the fall precisely to “youth culture having ‘stagnated’ or even dumbed down.”

While children in their preteen years have sustained the IQ gains (at a half-point per year), teens have gone in the other direction. Flynn explains the discrepancy as a displacement of parental influence in the “tween” years by youth culture, that is “peer groups that set the cognitive environment.” While parents read to and converse with children up to age 10, after that kids spend more time “visually oriented around computer games” and the like. The former environment exceeds the latter in terms of cognitive challenge.

He even speculates that the reason the upper half has slid so much: “Maybe the rebellious peer culture of the lower half of British society has invaded the peer culture of the upper half.”

The story also notes that “previous research has suggested that using text messages and -mail causes concentration to drop, temporarily reducing IQ by 10 points.”

One other thing: Flynn is staunchly on the left (see here).