Johnson has a theory to back up this bold claim. In general, he says that popular media is making Americans smarter because it has become much more complicated over the past 20 years or so. Video games have moved light years beyond Pong, and now the games are insanely complex and time-consuming (and, he admits, not all that much fun most of the time). Television shows - at least some hour-long dramas - have adopted a format that includes multiple plot lines and larger casts of characters. And comedies like Seinfeld and The Simpsons rely heavily on inside jokes, which require regular viewers to remember punch lines from months or years earlier. The result? Americans with higher IQs, according to Johnson. What a deal! Watch TV and become a genius! Could there possibly be a downside?

If there is a downside, it’s that Johnson’s argument is completely unconvincing. He cherry-picks examples and relies entirely on anecdotal evidence, and there is no corroborating data to suggest that he’s actually right about anything. His argument falls with a heavy thud into the too-good-to-be-true bin.

Let’s start with video games. Johnson recalls the days, when he was a kid, that he played a paper-based fantasy baseball game that required players to keep track of huge amounts of data and do complex mathematical calculations just to play. Back then, he says, kids who played those kinds of games were oddballs, but now almost every kid plays games that are much more complex. They play video games like Zelda, spending days or weeks doing the same repetitive tasks over and over just to advance, and they ultimately have to turn to guidebooks with hundreds of pages just to sort it all out. But one must protest: in video games, unlike statistical baseball games, the computer does all the calculations, the solutions to puzzles are often arbitrary rather than logical, and resorting to reading a guidebook is akin to cheating on a term paper assignment. Where does the increased intelligence come in?

In defending television, Johnson cites a small handful of examples - The Sopranos, ER, Hill Street Blues - to illustrate how complicated TV has become. He mostly ignores the bulk of what’s actually on TV, except to claim that reality shows increase our social intelligence and allow us to make smart decisions when electing officials. Instead, he counts characters and subplots and tries to pretend that The Sopranos doesn’t have approximately the same structure as Guiding Light circa 1960.

Most damning of all, there is no evidence to back up Johnson’s claims. He cites a study that shows an increase in American IQs, but the study covered the period from the 1930s to the 70s, the time period Johnson claims was characterized by simplistic media, which would seem to contradict his argument. He cites another study which shows an IQ increase in the 70s and 80s, but in the Netherlands, not in the U.S. A link between an increase in IQ and media consumption is insupportable in any case, and Johnson shows no concurrent increase in applied intelligence in America - no increased SATs scores, no improved performance of American students compared to those in other countries, no improvement in logic or problem solving skills, mathematics, language, aesthetic appreciation or creativity, none of what Johnson calls “classroom stuff.” Apparently, his media geniuses are getting a lot better at playing video games and following The Sopranos, and that’s about it. Johnson isn’t worried about the absence of supporting data for any broader conclusion, though; he says he will leave that “to others to dispute,” and he moves on.