Is There A Reading Crisis

Some people think there is a reading crisis but some people don't seem to think so. One who doesn't think so is Adam Mastroianni the experimental psychologist behind the Experimental History, a substack newsletter thinks the reading crisis is overblown:

I am skeptical of this thesis. I used to study claims like these for a living, so I know that the mind is primed to believe narratives of decline. We have a much lower standard of evidence for “bad thing go up” than we do for “bad thing go down”. […] The actual data on reading isn’t as apocalyptic as the headlines imply. Gallup surveys suggest that some mega-readers (11+ books per year) have become moderate readers (1-5 books per year), but they don’t find any other major trends over the past three decades[.] [...] Other surveys document similarly moderate declines. For instance, data from the National Endowment for the Arts finds a slight decrease in reading over the past decade[.] […] These are declines, no doubt. But if you look closely at the reading time data, you’ll notice that the dip between 2003 and 2011 is about twice the size of the dip between 2011 and 2023. In fact, the only meaningful changes happen in 2009 and 2015. I’d say we have two effects here: a larger internet effect and a smaller smartphone effect, neither of which is huge. If the data is right, the best anti-reading intervention is not a 5G-enabled iPhone circa 2023, but a broadband-enabled iMac circa 2009.

Apart from the data showing less of a decline than I would've guessed (these are american numbers; for Germany I managed to find a decline of 5 minutes over 10 years (source)). He also goes into theoretical reasons that totally losing literacy is not very likely:

I think there is a deep truth here: human desires are complex and multidimensional, and this makes them both hard to quench and hard to hack. That tinge of discontent that haunts even the happiest people, that bottomless hunger for more even among plenty—those are evolutionary defense mechanisms. If we were easier to please, we wouldn’t have made it this far. We would have gorged ourselves to death as soon as we figured out how to cultivate sugarcane. [...] All serious intellectual work happens on the page, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. If you want to contribute to the world of ideas, if you want to entertain and manipulate complex thoughts, you have to read and write. […] That’s why there’s no replacement for text, and there never will be. Thoughts that can survive being written into words are on average truer than thoughts that never leave the mind. You know how you can find a leak in a tire by squirting dish soap on it and then looking for where the bubbles form? Writing is like squirting dish soap on an idea: it makes the holes obvious. […] I met an audio editor named Julia Barton, who was writing a book about the history of radio. I thought that was funny—shouldn’t the history of radio be told as a podcast?No, she said, because in the long run, books are all that matter. […] At the center of every long-lived movement, you will always find a book. Every major religion has its holy text, of course, but there is also no communism without the Communist Manifesto, no environmentalism without Silent Spring, no American revolution without Common Sense. This remains true even in our supposed post-literate meltdown—just look at Abundance, which inspired the creation of a Congressional caucus. That happened not because of Abundance the Podcast or Abundance the 7-Part YouTube Series, but because of Abundance the book.

He makes great points about the power of the written word and why a minuscule to moderate decline in reading is nothing too worrying, actually.

I found this argument very elegant:

A somewhat diminished readership can somewhat diminish the power of text in culture, but it’s a mistake to think that words only exercise influence over you when you behold those words firsthand. I’m reminded of Meryl Streep’s monologue in The Devil Wears Prada, when Anne Hathaway scoffs at two seemingly identical belts and Streep schools her:...it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.³What’s true in the world of fashion is also true in the world of ideas. Being ignorant of the forces shaping society does not exempt you from their influence—it places you at their mercy.

Finally he has gripes with the distinction between oral and literate cultures:

Most of the differences between oral and literate cultures are actually differences between non-recorded and recorded cultures. And even if our culture has become slightly less literate, it has become far more recorded.

I think this all rings true. But I can also tell by looking at my own reading situation that I am personally at a cross roads and have actually read less and less over time (especially books).^[1] So I will probably continue to share - maybe somewhat alarmist - videos and texts about a reading crisis that maybe actually doesn't exist. Because it helps me to get back into reading. Apologies.

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