Intelligence Cannot be Measured

Meagan Cox

                 Carr mentions in a section of his book that people often used a recorded rise IQ testing to dispute the fact that technology (mainly television and the internet) is causing the general population to be less intelligent. He then goes on to seemingly reject the fact that a rise in IQ testing shows that we are smarter, by saying that the IQ testing has only risen in a select few areas over the years. This, unlike most of what Carr has stated so far, is something that I definitely agree with, for although people may be able to access more information with each new technology that comes about, I do not think it makes them necessarily more intelligent. In my personal opinion, IQ testing is only a small measure of one’s intelligence.

                Most of what one learns in life occurs when he or she is a toddler. This means that usually, one’s main knowledge comes from his or her parents or someone significant from their life in a generation above them. Because of this, one cannot accurately say that one generation is more intelligent than another, for older generations are the one’s responsible for passing down the majority of information of what we know. Comparing something so broad as generations is much too difficult to do accurately, for each person is different and intelligent in his or her own way. Just because people are more able to access more information through the things that technologies such as the internet and television, does not mean that they are necessarily more intelligent. Rather, the access to the information just means that our generation is able to learn things in a different way.

Measuring intelligence is a difficult thing to do. To me, IQ tests can only measure so much and I cannot safely say that “intelligence” is exactly what IQ tests measure. Intelligence can be considered a variety of different things, from the way one communicates with one another, to the way one presents his or herself, to the way one solves a problem on a math test. For this reason, there is not really one way that one can measure intelligence, for it is more an opinion of how intelligent someone is than a fact. People are intelligent in different ways, and every person is good at different things, whether it be a variety of different things, or one thing.

It is true that the availability of internet allows our generation to have access to more information than our previous generation, however, the availability to all of this internet access is slowing down our generation’s communication skills. The internet is giving us more information, but the information it is giving us is mixed in its importance, some helps us to learn more, while some does nothing but distract us. I believe this is the reason why, as Carr mentioned, the areas in which our generation’s IQ has “risen” is in the areas of abstract information, while basic learning skills are not improving. The idea that our generation is more intelligent than the previous generation is much disputed, for although the internet gives us more information, it takes away from what some consider true intelligence- the way we communicate, carry ourselves, and present ourselves to others.