21 days ago
- Universal literacy was once believed inevitable, but reading is declining rapidly, suggesting the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.
- Americans read much less than before, with fewer than half reading any book in 2022, and reading for pleasure dropping significantly; gambling has become more common.
- Reading materials have become simpler, with shorter sentences in bestsellers, and popular books now include young-adult fiction, while classic literature declines.
- News consumption has shifted from reading to watching or listening online, with less than 10% of 20-somethings reading newspapers daily, exacerbating a literacy crisis.
- Despite reading more words through digital fragments like emails and social media, sustained attention to longer works is waning, leading to postliteracy and declining comprehension skills.
- Cognitive abilities are affected, with studies showing reduced reading stamina, lower test scores, and declining IQ trends, though some spatial reasoning may improve.
- The rise of video content, social media, and AI threatens deep thinking, with politicians like Donald Trump exemplifying postliterate communication styles that exploit distracted audiences.
- Reading is becoming a niche hobby, with economic and cultural power shifting to influencers and video creators, marginalizing traditional readers and literary figures.
- Efforts to resist decline include school bans on cellphones and a return to print books, but the broader trend suggests a shift toward a postliterate society with horizontal cultural transmission.
- The legacy of written knowledge is preserved digitally, but apathy and declining inclination to read pose risks to the ability to engage with rich, complex texts and think independently.