As a collective, our reading skills, and our reading experiences, have been steadily declining over the past two decades. Attention span, critical thinking, reading comprehension–all appear to be dwindling in the US. Per the nation’s report card (NAEP), students’ reading performance scores have shown significant decreases in the past few years, trending downwards since 2019. What’s going on with reading, and in the age of easy video and multimedia, does it matter? America’s pivot to a more digitally based K-12 education model in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought more video content into our kids’ education. A decline in our collective ability to devote our attention to reading and writing could indicate a potentially larger problem in our ability to reason effectively through complex, multi-step problems. The technologically-augmented world we now inhabit encourages the shrinkage of our attention, and the death of thinking in-depth, because the number of furtive interactions soars when we only devote a couple of seconds to anything. And, we risk losing extended reasoning skills to an endless, scrolling stream of non sequiturs.
In an age where screens dominate our waking hours, we consume information at a breakneck pace, in tiny, isolated pieces. Everything is out of context, and our pages reload instantly. We are consumers drinking from a firehose of disjointed data. Without devoting time to processing all of what we scroll through, it’s easy to stop even trying. My friends–the Death of Reading is upon us!
Before we lose sight of what we may be losing, let’s talk about reading for a moment. Why do we even do it? Why did we invent it? The truth is reading may be fundamental, but it is not natural. The act of reading and writing is ancient, but mere moments in the total evolution of humanity. And reading is difficult–just ask a first grader (or someone trying to read in another language). It was invented to codify language (intent, and poetry, and history) so we could send it across distances, sometimes even by pigeon! But, consider for a moment, if the Internet and video had been around in 3000 BC–would we have ever even invented reading and writing? I think the answer is yes, because writing and reading are qualitatively different (and in some ways superior) to video as a means of communication (and certainly in some ways inferior). The vast majority of the world’s current knowledge exists in written form–losing access to that would be a major blow to society.
When we lose reading and writing, we are losing essential thinking skills. While it may not be immediately visible in national reports–objectively, our nation’s literacy rate has over the course of the past 70 years only increased, creating potentially profound consequences for many individuals and society. Definitions of ‘literacy’ vary, but most nations measure the ‘ability to read and write’ as important skills to their citizens. In recent estimates, 86% of US adults are literate–close to the world average (despite being the wealthiest country in the world, or perhaps because of it?). There are some countries where at least half the population is illiterate, with massive gender disparity in education, like Chad and Afghanistan. And yet, many also approach 100%, like Finland and Cuba–even the UK comes in around 99%. Low literacy is costly and difficult to manage. So why does the US, despite being one of the ‘most developed’ places in the world, still fall behind its peers in so many key literacy metrics?
Though recent NAEP data shows declining reading scores for grade-school students, the shift is more than academic. The shift is cultural. Fewer people are reading for pleasure. The NEA has reported a continued drop in both adults and children who read, with now less than half of US adults having read at least one book in the last year. Even fewer kids are reading for fun anymore. But it’s not just that students aren’t reading; the nature of how we process information is changing. Reading a novel or a dense article requires sustained attention, imagination, and cognitive endurance. Compared to dopamine-fueled consumption of short videos and images with the same repeated words, or AI-generated summaries at the top of search results, it’s easy to see why reading feels more like a chore to young people today.
Reading still matters in our societies, crucial to our very species. It isn’t just a school subject; reading is humanity’s tool for understanding nuance, building empathy, and fostering independent thought. When we engage with creative writing, with history or philosophy, we build our brains. We come up with new ideas, we form opinions, we develop our language and memory. Our capacity for learning is catalyzed by learning itself. But when we resort to generative AI instead of looking inwards to generate our own words, we reinforce an inability to express ourselves uniquely. Each person is different–this should come across clearly from our communication. Removing that element of communicative differentiation means we are losing a key aspect of ourselves. Developing writing skills ensures that we know how to make ourselves understood, and gives us essential tools with which to understand each other.
When we lose reading, we risk more than just test scores. We risk a loss of critical thinking, a decline in empathy, a weakening of the foundations of our democracy (How many young people even understand the language of the US Constitution, for example–our most critical document?). Reading complex texts teaches students to interpret, analyze, and argue–without it, we lose intellectual rigor. Literature lets us see through the eyes of others, experience lives that are not our own. As reading declines, so may our capacity to understand outside perspectives, and our ability to think critically, to distinguish credible sources from misinformation. We risk losing access to multiple perspectives. And that would be a major loss to a pluralistic society like ours.
Is it too late, then? Have people really written off the written word? Of course not! Books are still being written and (some) people are still reading them. But the decline is an indicator of a potentially dire situation on the horizon for reading and writing. In order to reverse this trend, it will be necessary for our government(s) to revisit their approach to literacy and reinvest in its role in encouraging independent thinking.
Reading is not just a skill to be measured, but a habit to be nurtured. It is a core element of critical thinking that is essential for the survival of our democracy. Our governments should encourage families and communities to carve out more time for free reading, outside of tests or homework. And invest in libraries—the foundations of free thinking in our communities. We are so lucky to have public institutions where books are free and discovery is welcomed. There are many places in the world where this kind of free access to information is only a dream to the average person. Parents, educators, and policymakers need to take a stand and begin to treat reading in the digital age as a lifeline. It keeps us human when everything is increasingly ephemeral and plastic.
The Death of Reading isn’t inevitable in America, but it is looming. If we continue on this path, where literacy was just a checkbox to keep us ahead of other nations and not something necessary to our sense of humanity, we will raise new generations that are less curious, less informed, and less connected to one another. Reading matters deeply, not just for academic success, but for the future of our culture and democracy. That is why we should care. Why we need to care. Thank you for reading!
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