Why teenagers aren't as bright as we were

Far from growing brighter with each passing year, today’s teen­agers are, in fact, duller-witted than we were

at their age.

Michael Shayer, professor of applied psychology at King’s Coll­ege, London, conducted studies proving that 2008's brightest 14-year-old is only on a par with 1976’s brightest 12-year-old.

That means, in just one generation, our teen­agers’ brain­power has declined dramatically.

It also confirms what I am sure you have already noticed. Teen­agers, even the brainy ones, seem chronically incapable of following instructions or responding to requests.

If you ask them to write down a phone number, a clear enunciation of the digits once will not do. Said teen­ager will require you to repeat each digit, possibly more than once, underlining his slowness by repeating your repetition.

You: “Seven.” Him: “What was that?” You: “Seven.” Him: “Seven, yeah?” You: “Zero.” Him: “What, zero?” You: “Yes, zero.” And on and on until you give up or run from the room screaming.

Attempt to engage a teenager in a series of activities – “Please make your father a cup of tea, pick your trainers off the floor and bring down your school shirt so I can iron it” – and chaos and confusion reign. “Bring down my shirt and what?”

Yes, indifference plays a part. Yes, selective deafness is often employed. It’s impossible to ignore, however, a failure to grasp simple commands which, in our day, would have been rudely described as thick.

Why are our brightest teenagers two embarrassing and shameful years behind their own parents?

Professor Shayer ascribes their lack of mental agility to three factors: too much television watching, too much time playing computer games and schools that focus on teaching them to pass SATs and nothing much else.

Into the professorial mix you may wish to add: baby buggies that face baby away from parent so

neither can engage with the other; parents plugged permanently into mobile phones and/or iPods; TVs in children’s bedrooms watched in solitary silence; individual “grazing” instead of family meals eaten round a table together; parental fear of letting children play outside unsupervised and financial pressures which mean that we are not just cash-poor but time-poor.

Who has time to complete a complicated jigsaw puzzle or play the “can you remember all the objects on a tray” game these days? It’s so much quicker to flick on the computer console.

The brain, our teachers never tired of telling us, is an organ that needs exercising.

Replace old-fashioned mental arithmetic with a calculator, old-fashioned learning of quotations by heart with allowing the set book to be brought into the examination room and old-fashioned board games, word games, chess, draughts and backgammon with 200 television channels available around the clock and there’s no need to bother thinking. Ever!

In lieu of endless pre-fabricated entertainment, we were forced to make something up.

The sofa became a galleon. The pots and pans became instruments for a brass band. We played cards, Scrabble, Monopoly and a horrible “out-loud” game insisted on by my father involving adding a letter to the previous person’s letter but making sure never to end a word.

If my father beat us at any of the aforementioned games, we were compelled to address him by the title “Oh Supreme Champion”. There’s nothing like it to concentrate the mind.

What’s to be done to stop the rot? Follow the advice an eminent child psychologist gave me way back in the Eighties:

“The best thing you can do for your children is switch off all appliances, make no arrangements and simply say to them, ‘Go to it’. That’s the only way to teach them how to fill their time profitably for themselves.”