Free Study Finds Memory Decline Surge In Young People 2025

Has social media engineered the collapse of the human mind? The answer is yes, if we believe the results of a measurable scientific research of this catastrophe, which was recently published in the journal Neurology. The paper, by Ka-Ho Wong and colleagues, is a data-rich examination of 4.5 million survey responses. Its finding is that “serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions” is no longer a fringe complaint, but a surging public health crisis.

Those 4.5 million survey responses were gathered over a decade through the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Its outcome is clear on the data, more and more younger people have: serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition.

The numbers are unambiguous. From 2013 to 2023, the age-adjusted prevalence of such “cognitive disability” in U.S. adults rose from 5.3 to 7.4 percent. But the real shock lies in who changed. Among adults 18 to 39 years old, the supposed cognitive prime, the prevalence nearly doubled, from 5.1 to 9.7 percent. It climbed across every racial and economic line. It tripled even among the highest-income bracket, those meant to be buffered by privilege.

This being said the authors do acknowledge that “Younger adults, racial minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are disproportionately affected, highlighting the urgent need for targeted interventions.” And, with scientific rigor, the researchers “excluded participants who self-reported depression … to better identify non-psychiatric cognitive impairment.”

Because what they have found is not a disorder hidden in a subpopulation. It is the first measurable biological signature of a civilization rewiring its own nervous system.

For fifteen years we have been building, at planetary scale, a machinery of disattention: social platforms that auction attention by the millisecond; search engines that outsource memory; feeds that weaponize emotion for engagement. The result is an economy that grows in inverse proportion to our capacity to think. Now the data have arrived like a coroner’s note. The youngest generation, those who have never known a world before the machine, are reporting that they can no longer concentrate, remember, or decide.

The authors, although cautious, propose the polite hypotheses. Social isolation. Increased reliance on technology. Maybe “greater awareness” of cognitive problems. One almost applaud th

Source: HackerNews