Are children more intelligent than their parents...?

The point is (or better yet, the difference)is that what you're talking about is NOT intelligence, but culture. These are completely different things. The society is structured in a particular way: poor people have poor possibilities to raise their level of culture and so they are intelligent, but IGNORANT. As you said before your grandparents had an happier life because they lived in the nature, in villages, with people they knew very well. So, human and natural contact was very high and that's why they were very intelligent (maybe more than you and your childrens, not because you are stupid, but because they were stimulated in another way), but unfortunately very IGNORANT. I swear if they had the possibility to study they would become excellent students. "Younger" generations had a lot more exposure to culture because past generations did lot of sacrifices to give to the future one a better life and that went better and better as you said. What is the "lifter" of the life? The lifter is the SCHOOL. The school gives to the generations the possibility to raise their LIFE STATUS, doesn't matter if they are poor or rich. School is culture, culture means better work, better work means more money to raise a better generation. Do you understand? The key is not the intelligence, but the MONEY and the SCHOOL (the "lifter" :)). Older generations maybe were more intelligent than older because today's generation has less contact with other people, with the nature. In some way, if you think about it the tecnology is isolating us from the rest. Today people stay at home all the day in front of a PC (like me lol, unfortunately :() instead of going outside, running, meeting people, nature etc. Now, maybe your situation is different, but that's the present and if you think about it the gold period it's vanishing: we are slowly going backwards. The economical crisis, the BAD school (at least in Italy) etc.. Excuse me if I'm tedious or crazy (:D). That's a long story to write... Hope I was kind a reason of reflection :)

I don't think that children are necessarily more intelligent than their parents are. Modern technology has just given children more opportunities in education and learning. it may just seem that children are more intelligent because of this.

I think what it is is that children soak up information more easily, which is why they can work technology and why young people at an office are more easily adaptable to new technological advances. I don't think our ancestors were less intelligent than us, but I think they had less oppurtunities for what we call "intelligence". But their survival skills were much more intense, I bet.