New results from the 2025 PISA exams have raised alarm among educators worldwide after revealing a widespread drop in students’ critical thinking and reading comprehension skills. The international assessment, which measures the academic performance of 15-year-olds across dozens of countries, points to a troubling pattern: as young people spend more time on smartphones, social media, and artificial intelligence tools, their ability to focus and analyze what they read appears to be eroding.
Over the past decade, countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—a group of mostly wealthy nations that coordinates on economic and social policy—saw their average reading score drop by 28 points, landing at 463 points overall. The decline has accelerated recently: scores fell 14 points just since the last PISA cycle in 2022. To put that in context, education experts consider roughly 20 points equivalent to a full year of learning, meaning students today are, on average, reading and reasoning at a level that lags behind where their peers stood only a few years ago.
Researchers behind the report suggest that constant digital distraction and reliance on AI-generated answers may be undermining students’ patience for sustained reading and independent analysis, skills that are foundational to academic success. Colombia was among the countries where scores slipped in both reading and math.
For the full findings and country-by-country breakdowns, check out the original report at El Tiempo.
Source: Pruebas PISA: uso de celulares, redes sociales e inteligencia artificial están afectando comprensión de lectura y capacidad de análisis en los jóvenes (eltiempo.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: Sean MacEntee, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).