Our Students Aren’t Stupid. They’re Struggling With Deep Thinking.

Last week at Theatre Fest in Galveston, I was having dinner with some directors when one of them made a pretty bold statement: “Kids are getting stupider.”

They said students have a harder time making decisions for themselves. They’re hesitating to take risks. They don’t like having to make a choice unless someone has told them what the right choice would be, so they just freeze. I find that part kind of interesting, because is there ever really a “right choice” when you’re trying to make creative work?

But are kids actually getting less intelligent? I don’t think so. I think they may be getting less practice being alone with their own thoughts.

This is something that I recognize in myself actually.

It takes longer to get into the deep

I grew up without any digital devices. I was all over the place with grass stains on my feet. Now I carry the entire world in my pocket, and I can feel the difference it makes in my own brain. When I’ve spent too much time on there there’s a huge difference in how I’m able to settle down and start creating. I can still do deep creative work, but it takes longer for me to get there.

Research suggests this to be true. One study found that simply having your smartphone nearby can reduce available cognitive capacity—even when you aren’t using it. Another found that merely receiving a notification can disrupt attention without ever picking up the phone.

And now we have AI. I’ve noticed that when I use ChatGPT too much, I start asking it to find my words before I’ve given myself enough time to find them (Sorry guys, most of my social media has AI captions). Research into generative AI is still new, but a 2025 study of knowledge workers found that greater confidence in AI was associated with less reported critical thinking.

Technology isn’t necessarily making us stupid, but it is changing which mental muscles we’re regularly using.

This is so important in theatre, because we need to be doing the exact opposite when we try to create. We have to stay with an idea, make decisions regardless of knowing whether it’s “right”, and then experiment, make failures, and try again.

I think of it like a swimming pool. The digital world keeps us quickly moving through the shallow end. Being really creative happens in the “deeper water” of your brain. If a student has been in the shallow end all day, how we can’t expect them to instantly jump into the deep end because theatre class started? They may need time to wade through to the deeper side.

Creativity also requires the willingness to look stupid

There’s another layer to this. Teenagers aren’t just surrounded by constant stimulation. They’re surrounded by a constant flow of people to comapre themselves too. No wonder they’re so afraid to put themselves out there! You can get criticised so easily for making bold and original choices. If I were a teenager now, that would’ve torn me apart. I have a respect for what our young people are dealing with today, actually.

Research on adolescents has connected upward social comparison on social media with lower momentary self-esteem. The American Psychological Association has also specifically warned about the effects of social comparison and recommended that social-media use be tailored to adolescents’ developmental maturity.

Now ask that teenager to improvise.

There is no answer key, everyone is watching, and they have to make a choice before they know whether it’s a good one.

Creativity requires a certain tolerance for looking stupid. If your brain has been trained to constantly ask, How do I look? Is this good? Is someone else better?, taking an artistic risk becomes much harder.

That means our classrooms need to be places where failure isn’t socially catastrophic. That doesn’t mean lowering expectations. It means creating enough psychological safety so students are willing to reach for them.

So how do we help students get back into the deep?

First, we have to stop rescuing them from the GAP. When we ask a question and a student doesn’t immediately answer, we tend to jump in. Maybe sometimes the better response is simply to wait in silence for a bit. Students need opportunities to discover that an empty moment isn’t an emergency. They can sit with a problem long enough for their own idea to appear. It’s good for them to be still. For all of us!

Second, remove some of the competition for their attention. Having phones put away, and ideally far away from reach, gives their brains one less thing to manage. Personally, I also schedule distraction-free days when I know I need to do deep creative work. I have to pay for an app that restricts my social-media time because I’ve learned I have no self control, and that too much comparison messes up my mojo and creativity. Honestly, as a parent, I’ve chosen to wait on social media with my kids. Those are personal choices, but they’ve come from recognizing that attention needs protection especially in their young developing brains.

And third, move.

This one particularly interests me as a movement clinician. A meta-analysis of 36 randomized trials involving more than 4,500 children and adolescents found that acute exercise improved working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. Another meta-analysis found a positive effect of physical activity on creative ideation.

We can’t say that ten minutes of movement scientifically “undoes the TikTok brain.” But the research does suggest that movement supports several of the cognitive processes we need for creative work. Not to mention a whole slew of evidence to support the rest of the body and overall health of a person. We won’t go there today…

So perhaps instead of expecting students to walk straight from the digital world into deep artistic thinking, movement can become part of the transition.

Put the phone away. Get up. Move. Pay attention to your body and the people actually standing in the room. Then create.

Maybe they’re not getting stupider

I think my theatre director friends were noticing something real. Technology has changed the environment in which our students are learning to think, create and interact with other people.

But I don’t think they’ve lost the ability to think deeply.

Maybe they’re just getting less practice.

That’s actually encouraging, because practice is something we can give them, and I can’t think of a better place for that to happen than in Theatre class. Here we can protect their attention. We can get them moving. We can let the silence last a little longer. We can refuse to solve every problem for them. We can build classrooms where it’s safe to make a terrible first choice. And we can be patient when it takes them a little longer to arrive.

Our job isn’t to lower the bar. It’s to help them walk from the shallow end back into the deep.

Sources

Ward, A. F., et al. “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017.

Stothart, C., A. Mitchum, and C. Yehnert. “The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Phone Notification.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2015.

Lee, H.-P., et al. “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking.” Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025.

Avci, H., L. Baams, and T. Kretschmer. “A Systematic Review of Social Media Use and Adolescent Identity Development.” Adolescent Research Review, 2025.

Xue, Y., Y. Yang, and T. Huang. “Effects of Acute and Chronic Exercises on Executive Function in Children and Adolescents.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2020.

Rominger, C., et al. “Acute and Chronic Physical Activity Increases Creative Ideation Performance.” Sports Medicine - Open, 2022.