Why everyone stopped reading.

Colleges students are telling their professors they can't read whole books. Americans are reading fewer and fewer books each year. If we want to figure out why reading is declining, we need to look at how we teach reading and how we spend our time.

→ Sources

[mauricioangulos.]

Last year my teenage daughter told me that she wanted to work part time to get money for her things, so I made a deal with her: I prepared a list of books and I told her that I will give her $25 for each book she read, with a one page hand written review as proof.

She started slowly, but after a couple books she really got engaged, reading faster a more every week, and engaging in conversation over a coffee to discuss her readings. After a year her vocabulary, pronunciation and orthography improved a lot! Later she asked for a break, but she still reads books on her own just for fun. She learned to enjoy reading.

Best investment of my life!

[thehatter]

Reading stamina really is a thing. I used to read entire chapter books within a few days but after year long break of reading, I can barely read for an hour and now finish books in a week or more.

[TheAkturus]

It's 100% the distractability. I used to be an avid reader, who studied comparative literature at university. A part of the curriculum was reading a novel a week. The moment I got a phone with social media access my concentration started dying. I have actively blocked shorts and reels (these are the most destructive) and have better concentration the less I look at my phone. It irritates me so much when scientists say there isn't adequate proof that social media is messing with kids' brains. It's literally made for being addictive, and adults can't control it either.

[alisamills]

I'm glad you addressed cell phones and social media. I have seen it become a huge obstacle in my student's lives and even my own. As a middle school Librarian, It is very difficult to convince many of my students to check out books I know they would love if they give them a chance. Also, the way they were taught to read has made reading a chore.

[alex_slopers]

Immediately after you said “develop reading stamina” at 5:16, an ad cut in and mr beast says “personally I hate reading so I just upload everything I have to read and have this app read it back to me”

[jasonfisher]

Two hours ago, I told myself that I need to put the phone away and finish that book I've been reading for the past two weeks. Yet, here I am watching you.

[conorbeezhold]

“The world wants you to read, it just doesn’t really want to give you the time to read a good book.” You have given voice to a deeply felt frustration that I haven’t been able to put my finger on for so, so many years of school and work. Thank you ❤

[AvaLynn]

My dad had my brother and I read books throughout the summer. He would ask us to give book reports on each. He joked about not allowing our "brains to sleep" during the summer time. We'd be in all kinds of summer programs especially reading. People always tell me how well spoken I am today. ❤ Thanks dad!

[columhaight]

Another massive problem, which has been prominent in my phil degree, is the opposite. To demand that a student read a book a week does not encourage deep reading. For example, when I read Spinoza’s Ethics the first time, it took me 3 weeks and I wrote down every proposition and corollary just to see how they fit together and what implications arise. The problem is time, while phones take up so so much, and reading stamina is necessary, many reading deadlines are unreasonable, especially when the material demands careful attention

[thewickedpen]

You didn't mention the large hand-off to the educational arena of childhood book culture passed on by parents. My parents read to me. My parents had books around the house. I have mental snapshots of my Father and Mother reading their books. I copied this with my child. It was very telling when she came home from a sleepover and one of the first thing she mentioned was: "Momma, there were no books! My friend didn't even have a bookshelf in her room!" (They weren't Kindle fans, either, as it turns out)
I'm not saying this would "fix everything"; just that I felt it should be mentioned. Thank you for the video. I was a "whole language" kid, but fortunately turned into a bookworm - I blame my parents. :P

[apollosun]

I was an avid reader well into my 20's. Then along came the internet, and now I argue with strangers from around the world about things that don't matter.

[kathryn]

We banned cell phones from the classroom but the kids are addicted. When I enforced the phone policy I become the phone police and not the teacher. It's terrible.

[Aiphiae]

I'm a high school teacher. I doubt you'll see this but your video really resonated with me because my colleagues and I have been screaming about this problem for well over a decade. *Every single day* I am shocked by the lack of literacy skills in so many of my students. It is *shocking.* Our grade 9s and 10s have an average reading level of grade 6 - and 30% of our students - *THIRTY PERCENT!* - are reading at a grade 2 (TWO!) level. It is insane.

You hit the nail on the head with the switch from phonics. It was an absolute catastrophe and it was one many teachers recognized as such *decades* ago. My Mom taught for 37 years and I remember her talking constantly about this change. In fact, she refused to be part of it and continued to teach phonics when it was replaced in the curriculum.

The education system has a real problem with hopping onto unproven trends. There's always some new administrator who is trying to make a name for themselves or heard about some fancy new method of teaching math, reading, writing, etc. Almost always it's complete crap - but the board will pay *millions* to the people peddling it and adopting initiatives to implement it all, only to find out years later it doesn't work - which leads them to hop onto the next bit of nonsense where the cycle repeats.

There's another thing I'd mention that I think you could do an entire video about, and that is the rise in "passive hobbies" where kids will just sit there and watch other people do things on social media. It blows my mind how many hours kids will spend thumbing through TikTok *every day.* I have students who, when asked to do an accounting of their weekly phone use, have 40+ hours a week on TikTok. I have students with over 80 (and in one case *100* !) hours a week on their cell phones. If you ask them how many videos they remember watching out of all those hours, it's *maybe* 5 to 10. What a complete waste of time. Nobody is reading because they're just watching life pass them by. It is *exceptionally* disturbing.

Interesting video. Thanks for making more people aware of the problem.

[DR]

As an American, I studied abroad at a major UK university. We were given a page long reading list in history class. My classmates were immediately distressed and asked the professor if it was all required reading. He was scandalized and disgusted. He said, "if you are taking this class, I'd think you'd be interested in learning about the topic. None of that is required."
We seriously didnt understand school outside of the context of grades and competition. Learning to actually learn? Completely foreign.

[gsogymrat]

I'm 58 and a bookworm. I completely quit social media in 2016 because the pace and constant notifications were negativity affecting my ability to read for hours. I can't imagine having grown up with social media and then trying to read Middlemarch.

[azurerain]

As our attention spans are shrinking due to social media, it's getting increasingly harder to sell the positive points of reading. Reading isn't something that is immediately pleasurable and as you have mentioned, it's hard work and takes stamina to get through a book. It really comes down to personal discipline, the desire to pursue ideas within books, and to forgo quick dopamine rushes in exchange for a slower, but possibly more rewarding form of pleasure.

[dthendrick]

I'll never forget my sophomore year of high school when we started reading "to kill a mocking bird" as a class. We were doing "popcorn" reading where the entire class would take turns reading. However, this only lasted a day because half of my class couldn't read at a 1st grade level, and a few were completely illiterate. Day 2 we listened to an audio recording instead. Thats Louisiana public schools for you.

[hoosas]

6:42 funny thing about the SAT, one of the best strategies of the test is just to not read the excerpt at all. Turns out you can read the questions and find the context or answer within a sentence or two. It’s a huge time saver for the test, but definitely points to the fact we aren’t reading as much.

[SteveHorne]

This hits hard. With no gaps between events in our life, how does any one of them have meaning? Without negative space, objects have no edges or identity.

[mirandalewis-reagan]

I am going to university in Ireland next year to study English and Philosophy, and I am so happy that my parents and grandparents encouraged my love for reading older texts as a child. Researching, going to archives, and reading older novels, in general, is so fulfilling and teaches me so much about language and history. I am so happy my Mother(a high school English teacher) taught me phonics at home while I was learning the new method at school. I think it has truly changed my life trajectory and inspired me to pursue academia to the fullest degree. Unfortunately, I do not read as much or as often as I want to. I've been working on self-studying and reading more to prepare for uni, and thank god I have because I do not think I would be prepared enough for my course if I stopped or didn't start in the first place. Thank you for this wonderful video!