In 2002 I spoke with a lecturer in the humanities and he told me about how nobody was learning French at university level (in the UK). My own course had been cancelled due to the cost of teaching it, and the era of 'easy degrees' had set in during the early 90s.
replyBefore that, I also noticed the decline in newspaper readership in the 80s.
It is easy to blame this general decline on the latest tech (or moral panic), whether that be LLMs or even the existence of the internet, however, the trend in dumbing down has been going on for decades.
In the context of a declining empire and financialised economies, this makes a lot of sense.
I think we are talking about two different trends that have similar symptoms. I do agree there has been a noticeable anti-intellectual trend for a long time, especially in the West. (See also: Grade Inflation.) But that is separate from the drop in attention spans, which is relatively recent has been pretty strongly linked to digital stimulation, constant multi-tasking, and now short-form social media.
replyLLMs are an entirely new dynamic with significant cognitive implications, but I fear it will be hard to discern their impact from the falling attention spans and other long-term trends that have led to things like grade inflation.