TODAY’S screen culture is boosting the intelligence of children and teenagers, according to a controversial new book.

Far from being brain-rotting rubbish, the book argues that popular culture may be partly responsible for raising IQ levels in western nations.

Video games, phone cameras, iPods and television shows are teaching a generation how to engage in systems analysis, probability theory, pattern recognition and spatial geometry.

They also improve attention span, memory and the ability to follow a narrative. Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, published in America next week, writes: “For decades we’ve assumed that mass culture follows a steadily declining path towards lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ‘masses’ want dumb, simple pleasures.

“In fact, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.”

Shows such as The Sopranos, the multilayered story of a New Jersey mafia family, make far greater demands on their audience than past prime-time series such as the 1970s drama Starsky and Hutch.

IQ scores in developed nations have been steadily rising since 1943 at an annual rate of 0.31 points. In the 1990s, scores accelerated at a rate of 0.36 points.

Johnson argues exposure to new media may be responsible. “Over the last 50 years, we’ve had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies and interfaces from the TV clicker to the worldwide web.”

The skills developed are the very ones measured in IQ tests, in which “you survey a field of visual icons and look for unusual patterns”.

George Erdos, a psychology lecturer at Newcastle University, said: “Since most standard intelligence tests depend on speed of information processing and decision-making, if your brain is used to processing information fast from early childhood then you will probably do better in these tests.”

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