It turns out that doomscrolling for four hours a day isn’t exactly conducive to learning algebra.
What happened: Canadian high school students’ math, reading, and science scores have drastically declined over the past two decades, according to a new OECD assessment that measured the performance of 15-year-old students across 91 countries last year. Across science, reading, and math, Canadian students' scores were the lowest ever measured by the assessment.
In Canada, over a quarter of students performed below the baseline level for math considered adequate to function in society — that’s up from 10.1% in 2003.
For reading, nearly 22% of Canadian students were below that baseline, compared to 9.5% in 2003.
Zoom out: Globally, students are over a year behind where they were in 2018 (15-year-olds have essentially fallen to a 14-year-old’s academic level). Between 2018 and 2025, reading scores fell by 25 points while math scores declined by 22 points across OECD countries.
The silver lining: because Canadian students are declining at a slower rate than their peers, their performance still ranks 10th out of the 91 countries assessed. Hooray?
Why it’s happening: It’s likely not a coincidence that the decline in academic performance accelerated around that time: a) COVID disrupted learning and shut down schools, and b) hyper-addictive short-form video platforms surged in popularity.
The OECD found that access to social media has harmed students' ability to concentrate (shocking), particularly on complex tasks and larger texts, and that students who regularly use AI do significantly worse on science and reading tests.
Why it matters: Aside from the obvious problems created when a growing share of kids can’t manage to get through a book, poorer academic performance is also likely to drag on students’ future earnings. One study found that a single-point increase in high school GPA raises average annual earnings in adulthood by between 12% and 14%.—LA
