While you wait: The Death of Reading (from The Global Story)

What It Covers

Writer James Marriott argues society is entering a post-literate age where reading has declined dramatically since smartphones emerged in 2007. He examines how the eighteenth-century reading revolution democratized knowledge and enabled modern democracy, and warns that declining literacy threatens reasoning ability, education standards, and democratic discourse itself.

Key Questions Answered

• •Reading decline statistics: Forty percent of American adults stopped reading for pleasure, while one-third of British adults report the same trend. OECD data shows literacy declining or stagnating across most developed countries since the mid-2010s. American high school students now score at their lowest recorded levels in math, science, and literacy on standardized assessments.
• •Cognitive impact of smartphones: Research indicates various measures of human reasoning and intelligence began falling around the mid-2010s when smartphones became widespread. IQ scores may have started declining during this period. University professors, even at prestigious institutions teaching English literature, now assign fewer books or expect students cannot finish assigned readings completely.
• •Print versus oral communication bias: Written text forces reliance on logical argumentation by removing emotional persuasion tools like tone, appearance, or charisma. Complex philosophical works require iterative writing, editing, and refinement that spoken communication cannot achieve. Visual and oral media allow persuasion through emotional appeals, shouting, crying, or charm rather than pure reasoning.
• •Democracy's dependence on literacy: Modern democracy emerged specifically from highly literate eighteenth and nineteenth-century societies where print democratized knowledge and allowed citizens to see beyond impressive visual displays of power. Pre-literate feudal societies relied on emotional appeals through fireworks, parades, and grand architecture. Returning to visual, emotional communication threatens the logical discourse democracy requires.
• •Information access paradox: While the internet appears to democratize information by removing gatekeeping barriers, reliable information access has actually become restricted to wealthy, educated people who can afford newspaper subscriptions. Algorithmic gatekeepers in Silicon Valley now control information flow, promoting angry and emotional content to maximize screen time rather than prioritizing accuracy or truth.