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Literacy crisis: Americans today are outright refusing to read; gambling now more common than books in the former US. {Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic 8 July}
A new Dark Ages is taking shape, and that is not hyperbole but probably an understatement. Consider this anecdote, FTA:
Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.
That is a staggering decline in less than a decade. Nine years is not even a blip in the course of modern civilisation. The figure is so extraordinary that I can scarcely wrap my mind around it, so I shall not attempt to do so any further at the moment.
The scariest part of the decline in reading for pleasure is that it is being witnessed across all demographics. The youngest generations are the least inclined to read and the most tech-addled, as one might expect, but only an estimated 38 per cent of Americans read a novel last year. Is it any coincidence that this is occurring at the same time anti-intellectualism is running amok and a narcissistic clown has returned to the White House after failing spectacularly the first time around?
Decades of vapid popular culture, political gaslighting that convinced people to oppose their own interests, and immersion in technologies designed to fragment attention have combined to produce a society that no longer practises critical thinking. A kind of mass zombification is underway, and I want out of this timeline and away from everyone in it. It is not the sort of life I wish to live, nor the sort of society in which I wish to live. #Murica.
FTA: Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you’re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the converse is true as well: The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
