Why We're Getting Dumber Every Year
Wyatt Woodsmall
Wyatt Woodsmall
What do Visualization, IQ and Television have in common?
I recently attended an incredible seminar called “Advanced Learning and Teaching Strategies”. The seminar was being taught by internet marketing genius, Eben Pagan, and his coach Wyatt Woodsmall.
Wyatt is possibly one of the most brilliant men I have ever met. His understanding of the human mind and how it works is beyond anything I’ve seen. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Wyatt trained Tony Robbins.
Anyway, during the seminar, Wyatt shared that the average IQ has been dropping for the last 50 years. That means that for the last 50 years, human beings have been becoming dumber and dumber.
Watch the video below to find out WHY this is and WHAT you can do to make sure you get smarter, instead of dumber.
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can do for you here.
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Tagged with: IQ • television • video • visualization • Wyatt Woodsmall
Interesting article but there is a lot of research that suggests we have been getting more intelligent year on year, and in fact some suspect that this is partly due to television. Here’s the paper: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/flynn.pdf
If you are having trouble viewing the video, try playing it from Google here: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4498377442135556112
It seems that some Firefox users have trouble viewing Youtube videos on my blog, so I posted it to Google for you. Am working on a solution…
Not at all surprised at these results. My granparents with their 8th grade education write better than some college grads I work with today. Bruce, if you could find the authors or journal article titles of this research, I am very interested in purusing this concept. Thanks for posting this wake-up call!
Bruce you know I am on board with all that you do, as I believe we have a responsibility to help others as you say wealth, health and happiness. (mind, body, and spirit) When you say that the method they use to attain the avg. I.Q. of a 100 has been lowered, what is your source? It’s not that I don’t believe you, in fact before you even said it I knew television was the reason behind lower I.Q.’s. My point being, how do we know for a fact that the organization you mentioned has lowered the standards other than the fact that you say so?
Hi Allen,
It’s not that there is some conspiracy to hide the fact that IQ’s have been dropping (at least not that I know of). If I made it sound that way, it was unintentional.
No matter how smart of dumb we get, the average IQ will ALWAYS be 100. That’s becasue 100 was chosen as the number to represent whatever the average person’s IQ is.
As IQ’s have fallen, so the average IQ has remained at 100 (becasue 100 is defined as being average in this scale).
This can be decieving, because to the average person (who may not understand that 100 is average by definition) it appears as if the average intelligence of the human race has remained the same, when according to Wyatt’s data, it has dropped.
In any event, I have emailed Wyatt and asked him for clarification. If and when he replies, I’ll post his reply here…
Bruce
Brilliant Bruce,
I have been teaching for 25 odd years off and on and just today I was thinking how levels of intelligence are going down and also the ability to concentrate. I can’t help but think that Tv affects children on lots of levels. Also the programmes people watch , there is so much negativity bombarded at you and why watch it anymore. I think we should now have warnings on tv – bad for your health- occassionally is fine but most of it is utter rubbish being programmed into our minds even the news. I am visualising a “Good News Channel!”for selective watching – I’d love to be part of that.Sad we don’t teach children about their brains that’s on my visualisation list too !
Great stuff !
First off, I find the claim someone suspect. The fact one person made this claim does not make it true. I think you should investigate more closely before promulgating it.
Secondly, if it is true and TV is at fault, then it’s likely because TV contributes to reducing our attention spans. In that case, it’s also likely that Internet usage will exacerbate the situation, as it is even more attention-dispersing than TV, in which case you are in fact helping further the decline.
More to the point, don’t forget that IQ tests are not set by God. They’ve only been around for a century or so and are not necessarily the best gauges of actual intelligence. They may, in fact, be very poor gauges.
My fundamental belief is that the human intelligence level has remained fairly constant, with variances due to nutrition levels.
Hi Bruce. Thanks for speaking out about the downside of watching TV. Far too many people think of it as an innocuous way to relax! There are other negatives of TV watching as well. Research has shown a link between TV watching and obesity. People who “don’t have time” to exercise or prepare healthful meals may spend inordinate amounts of time watching TV and are more likely to be overweight. The health risks of obesity are just too numerous to mention! The other concern is the correlation between time spent watching TV and ADD. The American Academy of Pediatrics has studied this issue and found children who watch more than 2 hours of TV per day are more aggressive, have difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, and in the teen years are more likely to drink alcohol! Studies show TV is just not good for your brain because it decreases cerebral cortex function which negatively impacts critical thinking. So the bottom line like you said is to use your mind and body in much more constructive ways. It is a lifestyle choice that will have far-reaching positive effects. As a life coach and certified hypnotherapist myself, I applaud you for speaking out.
Hi Bruce. Thanks for the great video.Very interesting! I don’t have a television, I gave up watching it about two years ago – I couldn’t stand all the negativity. I gave up reading newspapers for the same reason. Every now and then I go to a friends house to watch a programme I really want to see, and even read the occassional interesting newspaper article.But that’s it – and that way I stay in control. I feel that I am protecting myself and my mind as well.And hey! guess what? I do have a high IQ. Keep up the great work, Bruce.
Kurt.
Thank you.
Great post Bruce! Tweeted it out there. Problems of TV effecting our ability to visualise and connect imput from different visual / audio / sensory sources (which helps creates neural networks) of course have even bigger impact on children aged 0 – 7yo. TV for these small children can seriously impair the growth of these abilities from what I’ve read. Not sure if it prevents it being improved later on in life, but it’s surely going to be harder given the importance of human development between ages 0 -7yo.
PS video only seems to show up for me using IE, not on Firefox.
Thanks for sharing this info. It has been my theory for many years that TeeVee watching diminishes ability to visualise. I’m a visual artist and my TV was miraculously stolen in 1969 and I’ve never chosen to replace it.
For people interested in this issue there is an illuminating book/treatise: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, over 25 years old, can’t recall the author at this moment (I’ve just been over playing the brain games the last 1/2 hour, so may remember any minute! A great resource, thanks loads!) Sure one could find it on Amazon.
Further, about 20 years ago I lived for a time with a person who manifested grand mal seizures. I tried to find as much info as possible. One of the intriguing things I turned up was that sensitive persons, (children especially) often suffered seizures simply from watching TV, more often when watching the screen from an oblique angle – the flicker of older sets being I kind of entrainment of brainwaves. Whether this would still prove true with updated tech, don’t know.
My point is that indications are that the medium AND the content both contribute to a certain degradation.
And the ‘net? I try to maintain a dialogue with it, as I use it a lot. I do not find LED screens disturb my overall field like CRTs. As Elrond comments, the impact on the youngest Humans is of greatest concern.
Thanks for continuing to share and explore!
Happy Day!
RAL*
Thanks for the video Bruce.
I agree that T.V. affects our intelligence. I rarely watch it anymore and feel much better as a result. As Kurt said above, I hate the negativity of t.v.
The only time I do watch t.v. is when I need to do something that requires no thought. It numbs my mind.
I do sometimes wonder about how the internet is affecting us. Students are cheating a lot now because they really don’t have to do any work, they can find all teh answers they need online. (I’m not talking about research here, but buying assignments and cutting and pasting ideas of others as thier own). Also, isn’t YouTube one of the most popular sites? So even when people are online they are “watching t.v.”
Just some thoughts.
Sarah
I would need to see the data upon which Wyatt bases his claims. Actually, studies show that IQ’s have increased over the course of the 20th century, and that IQ tests have had to be renormed to be harder, so as to keep the average at 100. It’s a well known phenomenon called the Flynn Effect.
In his study of IQ tests scores for different populations over the past sixty years, James R. Flynn discovered that IQ scores increased from one generation to the next for all of the countries for which data existed (Flynn, 1994).
Until Wyatt demonstrates otherwise, I beg to differ.
Hi Bruce, interesting stuff. In my experience with my own
pretty intelligent children,I have noticed that they have developed a sort of mental laziness. It’s not that they are dumb, but the fact that they can so easily escape to the dumb entertainment on TV, makes it way to attractive for them to avoid the unease and confusion that inevitably comes with growing up and changing. Instead of using the opportunity and making use of the un-rest their growing-up process offers, and thereby using the opportunity to make their own choices based on what they feel inside, they flee and park their mind in some tv-haze, till the “irritation” has passed, unused.
And I wonder (they are not very old yet, but still) if this will impair the unfolding of their lives. The thing is of course, what to compare it with, without being randomly judgmental. All I can see is that I had already, at their age, a hugely different vocabulary, general knowledge and a storeroom full of images and plans, that I was able to use and build my life with. But who knows what is better in the end? Maybe the’re just different? Evolution at work?? As for now: they’re quite happy. And isn’t that the purpose, after all? Ah well, these are just some thoughts that I like to share with you people
. Have a wonderful day!
I raised my kids without tv. It happened accidentally, I was late paying a cable bill and the cost of reconnecting was ridiculously high and I wouldn’t pay it. So, we read. For the next ten years! Lots of great kids books, and great novels. It was a blast actually, way more fun than tv could ever be. The kids became readers and awfully bright at school. At the same time, it seemed to me that some of their peers where just dumbed down by tube and video games. (This part is kinda sad.) So, the moral is, get rid of tv and read with the kids.
Good info Bruce. Wyatt and Marilyne (his wife and partner) have a ton of great info that has blown me away since I first heard Wyatt.
Here is a link to their website and they have some great info there and they just came out with a new book called, “Personality Language”. Good read for sure.
http://www.TheScienceOfidiots.com
Keep up the good work and have fun in the Bahamas.
Cheers,
Andrew Anderson
http://www.21to21.com