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Are kids these days doomed?
A concerned middle school teacher recently took to social media to explain the lack of reading and problem-solving skills in her teen students.
“I don’t understand how these kids ended up at this point,” a Dallas, Texas, teacher named Ms. L said about her 8th-grade students in a now-viral TikTok video.
“I teach 8th-grade history and I have 110-ish students — two of them are reading at grade level right now. 18 of them are at a kindergarten level, 55 of those students are between a second and fourth grade level,” she continued. “It’s typical of what I’ve seen lately from students.”
This baffled educator couldn’t believe that her 13 and 14-year-old students lacked such basic skills.
“They cannot apply inference; they cannot process questions that are longer than a sentence. They cannot connect cause and effect. They can’t track multi-step ideas…” Ms. L explained. “It’s scaring me a little.”
The sad reality is that this isn’t just a one-off case — it seems to be a nationwide issue in schools.
The 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress, aka the “Nation’s Report Card,” showed that 70 percent of young teens scored less than “proficient” in reading, while 40 percent scored “below basic.”
Let that sink in.
And a lack of cognitive skills isn’t just in teens, as one commenter under Ms. L’s video pointed out: “I’m a senior in high school, and everyone around me who’s my age is at this level of cognitive decline as well, so I hate to say it but it isn’t just the little kids. it’s multi-generational now…”
Thousands of others share their two cents on the matter under Ms. L’s viral video.
“I was writing Twilight novel length fanfiction at 14. This blows my mind.”
“I hate to sound like the elderly but we were writing book reports and turning in annotated bibliographies in elementary school in my day.”
“ipad kids + no consequences = this.”
One person even referenced Australia’s recent social media ban for users under 16: “I’m looking forward to the data from the Australian social media ban.”
And that commenter might have a point, considering today’s teens are being raised in a technology-obsessed society, which could, in fact, be hindering their intellectual development.
The ban, which was implemented by Australia’s government earlier this month, intends to mitigate social media’s “design features that encourage [young people] to spend more time on screens, while also serving up content that can harm their health and wellbeing.”
Those under 16 years old can no longer use social media platforms such as TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads as existing profiles will be deactivated, nor can they set up new accounts.
While many parents are keeping their fingers crossed that this social media ban makes its way to the U.S., some states, like Virginia, are soon enacting their own screen rules.
Beginning on Jan. 1, 2026, those under 16 will be allowed to spend only an hour per day on social media, according to 7News.
“We are gonna see kids on these Apps less and we’re going to see them engaged more with their academics and their friends or whatever they’re doing,” Virginia State Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg told 7News.
