By Reagan Steele – Business & Economic Policy Writer

It’s not exactly new for older generations to gripe about the kids coming up behind them. The ancient Greeks did it. Romans did it. But what we’re seeing right now feels different. There’s a growing sense that America’s next generation is going soft, lacking grit, basic skills, and the willingness to do hard things.

Look at the surveys. Recent reports, including a 2024 Whop survey of U.S. Gen Alpha kids ages 12 to 15, show that roughly one-third want to be YouTubers, with TikTok creators and influencers also ranking near the top. That’s a far cry from past generations who ranked professions like doctor, engineer, or military service highly. Meanwhile, kids in China, Singapore, and South Korea are grinding through calculus, putting in long study hours, and dominating international test scores. Their economies keep roaring ahead while the West stagnates. According to the World Bank, the center of global economic growth has shifted to East Asia. Europe is lagging, and the U.S. is barely keeping its head above water.

New data shows this “wussification” isn’t just grumpy old man talk. It’s measurable reality.

A recent Education Scorecard analysis from researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth paints a grim picture. Looking at reading and math scores for students in grades 3 through 8 across more than 100 school districts from 2009 to 2025, the declines are widespread and deep. Reading scores dropped in about 83 percent of districts. Math scores fell in roughly 70 percent. On average, today’s kids are performing several months behind where students were in 2015.

This slide didn’t start with COVID. Gains from the 1990s through about 2013 stalled and then reversed well before the pandemic. Remote learning made it worse, but the roots go deeper: shifting education policies that prioritize feelings over fundamentals, exploding screen time, declining mental health since the early 2010s, and classrooms that can’t keep kids engaged.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term data backs it up. 13-year-olds are down 7 points in reading and 14 points in math compared to a decade ago. Despite billions in federal “recovery” spending, we’re not seeing real progress.

These aren’t just classroom failures. They’re a direct threat to America’s long-term economic competitiveness. A workforce that can’t read, do basic math, or focus is a workforce that gets eaten alive by nations whose kids actually study. If we keep this up, good-paying jobs in tech, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled trades are going to keep moving overseas or stay unfilled while we import talent.

Fixing this won’t be easy or cheap. It’s going to take real reforms: getting back to foundational instruction, cutting distractions, holding students accountable, and ditching the feel-good policies that have clearly failed. Temporary bandaids and more money thrown at the same broken system won’t cut it.

The next generation deserves better. And so does the American economy they’re supposed to inherit.