Conscientiousness Is Declining Among Young Americans: Why?

What personality traits during childhood or adolescence best predict an individual’s health, wealth, and happiness many years later—say, at 35 years of age? Is it their grade point average? Popularity? Emotional stability? No, the traits that best predict future well-being are actually honesty and self-control. 

Psychologists combine honesty and self-control into a single personality trait called “conscientiousness.” In fact, I devote two chapters of my book The Collapse of Parenting to citing the many longitudinal cohort studies, conducted over decades, showing that children and teens who are high in conscientiousness go on to enjoy better health, wealth, and happiness as adults. Grades, popularity, and emotional stability have much less predictive power for good outcomes compared to this trait. 

The bad news is there has been a dramatic decline in conscientiousness among teens and young adults over the past 10 years. That’s the result of a recent analysis of data from the Understanding America Study by journalist John Burn-Murdoch. Here is a figure from his article, which was published in the Financial Times:

Source: John Burn-Murdoch, "The troubling decline in conscienciousness," Financial Times. 8/08/25. Used with permission.

As you can see, young people are much less honest and self-controlled than they were just a decade ago. They are also more neurotic. Neuroticism is the inverse of emotionally stability, so they are also less emotionally stable. They are less agreeable and less outgoing. Burn-Murdoch documents an equally dramatic drop in the proportion of young people who say that they can make plans and follow through, and a corresponding rise in the proportion of young people who say that they are easily distracted and careless.

This is really bad news, and it should be a major wake-up call for American teachers and parents. As a society, we are failing to teach young people to be honest and self-controlled—and to persevere. 

Maybe this should not come as a surprise. American educators used to understand that teaching character and virtue were the top priorities in education. The columnist David Brooks wrote about this at length for The Atlantic not long ago. He quoted the American educational reformer John Dewey who said in 1909 that schools must teach morality “every moment of the day, five days a week.” Brooks also quoted the National Education Association, which affirmed in 1951 that “an unremitting concern for moral and spiritual values continues to be a top priority for education.” 

But not today. Over the past 24 years, I have visited more than 500 schools, and I can tell you that a “concern for moral and spiritual values” is not the top priority at most public schools or at most secular independent schools I have seen. Instead, the top priority is teaching the content areas, boosting test scores, “academic rigor,” and the like. When school leaders do talk about teaching character, they most often emphasize building grit à la Angela Duckworth. But, as Carleton University professor Jeffrey Snyder has observed, teaching grit without first teaching the more fundamental values of honesty, courtesy, and respect, leads to an amoral, careerist, “looking-out-for-number-one-type approach to education.” And in any case, it’s not working, even with regard to teaching grit. As noted above, Burn-Murdoch’s analysis of the Understanding America data shows a substantial drop in the proportion of young people who say that they can make plans and follow through, and a big rise in the proportion of young people who say that they are distracted and careless.

As I said, these new findings should be a wake-up call for all of us. Parents are the first teachers of virtue. I have been a family physician in the United States for 36 years now, and I have witnessed firsthand what I call “the collapse of parenting.” I wrote a book with that title, which became a New York Times bestseller, indicating at least some interest in this topic. As recently as 20 years ago, it was still common to find parents who would say, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That is a command, not a suggestion. But over the past 20 years, I have seen that command soften into a question. And the question is often something like, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” Mom has no idea how to respond when her son says, “If someone did that to me, I’d kick him in the nuts!” In the office, I now commonly see kids treat their parents with defiance and disrespect in ways that were unthinkable when I was a young doctor 30 years ago. 

We, as parents and teachers, need to prioritize the teaching of virtue to our kids. Starting now.

What, or who, is to blame for this collapse in conscientiousness? Burn-Murdoch suggests that “smartphones and streaming services seem likely culprits.” But I am not persuaded that smartphones alone are to blame. It’s true that the young people who demonstrate a decline in conscientiousness are digital natives, the first generation to grow up with cell phones in their pockets. But correlation is not causation. I am not defending smartphones; in fact, I have been writing about the dangers of smartphones for many years. Back in 2010, I wrote a book called Girls on the Edge, warning about how smartphones and social media were putting girls at risk. And I think it’s reasonable to believe that smartphones can lead to distraction and social isolation. However, distraction does not equal dishonesty.

Honesty and self-control are virtues that must be taught. As a society, we are failing to teach these virtues. Most parents are not teaching them authoritatively at home, and most public schools now emphasize teaching content areas rather than teaching character. This must change. 

Some parents are doing better than others. After conducting a large nationwide survey, Gallup pollster and economist Jonathan Rothwell reported on these pages that parents who are very politically conservative are the most likely to have strong, loving, authoritative relationships with their children: the kind of relationships most likely to give rise to kids who are honest and self-controlled. That doesn’t mean that you have to be politically conservative. But maybe you do need to parent with the confidence of a politically-conservative parent. As I have previously observed here: I now find that parents who are politically left-of-center are more likely to practice “gentle parenting,” more likely to affirm that “good parenting means letting kids decide,” and similar permissive practices. That wasn’t true 30 years ago, but it is true today. Authoritative parents understand that good parenting means the adults are in charge—loving but strict. 

Likewise, school districts must find the courage to return to teaching right and wrong in a comprehensive moral framework. In his article for the Atlantic, Brooks cited a study conducted by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith and colleagues, in which they asked young people about moral questions. “I’ve never had to make a decision about what’s right and what’s wrong,” one responded. “My teachers avoid controversies like that like the plague,” another teen said.

Those answers fit with what I have observed in school visits over the past 24 years, at least in my visits to public schools and secular independent schools. Administrators at these schools are determined to be inclusive; they don’t want anybody to feel excluded. So, it’s safest not to talk about values in any serious way, at all.  

We have to do better. Brooks has several concrete suggestions for how schools might proceed. Mandate social-skills courses, to teach kids how to disagree with courtesy and respect. Deploy a new core curriculum, to teach kids why it’s important to be honest and self-controlled. Require intergenerational service. Most schools already have some kind of community service, but often it is rote, discombobulated, and themeless. Make it more structured, with the objective of the kids learning from, and serving, the grandparents, for example. 

For three decades, our schools have prioritized teaching math, reading, and writing, while neglecting to teach honesty and self-control. The result: honesty and self-control are in free fall, while test scores in math and reading and writing are down as well. This make perfect sense—because virtue and character are fundamental to education. 

In 1788, Noah Webster wrote, “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities ; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head” (emphasis in original). Old Mr. Webster had it right. We, as parents and teachers, need to prioritize the teaching of virtue to our kids. Starting now.

Leonard Sax MD Ph.D. is a practicing family physician, psychologist, and the author of four books for parents, including the New York Times bestseller The Collapse of Parenting, second edition published by Basic Books in October 2024: www.leonardsax.com.