Define "power".

If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are.

But we deal with more information in a day than they would in a year. It's hard to say because we can't experiment, but I would expect they would be completely confused by the sheer amount of shit that we deal with routinely.

The next generation are just further along on this curve.

And as TFA says, they're perfectly intelligent and cogent when talking, it's just their literacy that is changing.

It's an adaptation to changing circumstances, not a reduction in thinking ability.

So be it? Everyone under 30 being permanently worse off due to a decline in education is an extremely depressing outcome, that seems like the whole argument for fixing it