Having more information to learn has nothing to do with IQ.
I'm inclined to disagree here. Not that having more information to learn makes you smarter, but much like the nutrition example, that having the mental exercise of learning allows you to effectively "feed your brain" when you're young and allow it to reach its potential.
I will admit that I don't have scientific backing for that claim. Perhaps because it doesn't exist, or perhaps because I haven't looked. But my personal belief is that a lot of what we call "intelligence" is a sort of pattern-matching function that we each have in our brains. Some people have more horsepower for that computer and a higher IQ potential, sure, but *all* people have more ability to reach their potential if they are feeding their brain with more patterns, at an earlier age.
Just as you won't be as tall as you "should" if you're malnourished as a child, I think you won't be as smart (as measured by IQ tests) as you "should" if you aren't exposed to intellectual stimulation at a young age and throughout your childhood.
In 1923 a kid who grows up on the farm and isn't exposed to much information outside of going to the little red schoolhouse and talking to his parents (who don't read for leisure) is probably not going to reach his IQ potential.
(One point: "more information" isn't the key. You can watch cable news and get tons of information and not get smarter; usually the opposite occurs. It's intellectual stimulation that is necessary, and I'm just saying that in a world with more access to information, you have more access to intellectual stimulation.)Also, the argument can be made that some tech makes us lazier, cognitively speaking. Pre-cell phone, you probably committed 50+ phone numbers to memory. Or at least 20 or so. Now? Maybe 5?
This I do agree with, and it was brought up in the article itself as a potential cause. A good example is GPS navigation. It's made us more able to go where we want, but less able to
figure out how to get there.
Growing up I had to build a mental map of my surroundings. Obviously getting around my neighborhood didn't require GPS. But long before I started driving, I had observed enough of my parents that I knew the expressway structure around the entire Chicago metro area. Which helped me once when I got lost, at night, in an area I'd never been. I knew that I was within an enclosed area bounded by four expressways, and that all I had to do was keep going the same direction until I ran into one of them, and then I'd be able to find my way home.
Kids now all have smartphones by the time they start driving, and can just punch the destination into Google Maps.
But again, it ties into my previous point... If you're not feeding your brain with work it needs to accomplish, you're not going to reach your IQ potential. Having to figure out how to get from point A to point B using a map (or, god forbid, a Thomas Guide) is feeding your brain with work. It doesn't seem like much, but the more you do it, the more you get used to doing it. And IQ tests are basically a test of problem-solving, so those people who have more experience solving problems usually do better than those who don't.