Early-instances of reading literature began as a niche hobby that upperclassmen had the funds to afford before reading at all became desired by “peasants.” Eventually when reading became an accessible sensation, the world saw the rise of literary movements such as romanticism, surrealism, and modernism, and the gradual popularization of house-hold story titles such as “A Christmas Carol,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or “The Great Gatsby.” However, despite how literature was held with notoriety and fame, nowadays literature has become obsolete, being barely read. According to The National Literacy Institute in 2024, 21% of adults are illiterate and 54% of adults can only read below a sixth grade level. But why is that?
The answer to this question is social media. This answer doesn’t need to be introduced, everyone is familiar with how addictive it can be. It isn’t hard to imagine many parents whining about how this generation is “glued to their cellphones,” especially when your own makes this complaint. To further back this glued behavior, according to an article from Harvard Health Publishing, there exists the concept of “doomscrolling” or scrolling on the internet in search of negative, distressful content. Though it is general advice to not always watch something edgy, what makes doomscrolling harmful is that it stimulates the brain’s limbic system created by amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for sending hormones which promote the body’s fight-or-flight response to danger. Because the body is in this state of reaction to danger —viewing controversial posts which we cannot stand— this triggers the body to continue consuming this negativity and prolonging social media consumption.
Then, in another article from Stanford Medicine, it states that “our brains release dopamine when we make human connections, which incentivizes us to do it again. But social connection has become muddled by social-media apps, making us vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. These apps can cause the release of large amounts of dopamine into our brains’ reward pathway all at once, just like heroin, or meth, or alcohol.” So, regardless of whether a person is positive on social media, it still attributes to being glued to the phone.
So, is it social media which persuades people to scroll through rather than to flip through? Possibly not.
While social media is a factor which discourages potential-readers away from reading, another potentially more greater factor can be pointed towards the educational system since elementary school. Accelerated Reading (AR) tests play a major role in this. Though AR tests have good, honest goals in improving literature popularity beginning at a young age, it forces students to read rather than encouraging them to. Thus, reading is moreso an assignment, chore, or task a student must take in order to keep a healthy grade.
“I think [reading] books is heavily inspiring and educational for people,” Jason Le (12) said. “Because the AR results went over to my grade,it demotivated me from reading as much as I did back then. When it comes to a young mindset, AR tests are kind of pressuring because whenever you read books, you want to enjoy them, versus whenever you take AR tests, you have to actually take them into detail. Word for word.”
It is true that there are some students who really did benefit from AR tests and became encouraged to read more.
“I found myself becoming more interested in reading because I wanted to challenge myself,” Ruby Villareal (12) said.
However, though it was a challenge to students, it gave a challenge to students, leading many students at an early age to give up because of the challenge.
“As a kid, from what I can remember, it made me feel kind of challenged in a way, because I don’t always remember some aspects of the book,” Aneeza Laqueo (12) said. “My test score would be lower because of those things.”
Then later in educational life, this challenge continued to harm the enjoyment of reading.
“You’re trying to fill out papers, trying to complete homework pages that require more analyzing or understanding of the text, rather than trying to enjoy the book itself. I understand how you can enjoy it and analyze it. It’s just, from a moment’s work where it’s overloading sometimes, especially with other classes and mind and work schedules, it can be kind of discouraging in motivation to read as a whole,” said Laqueo.
There are likely many more students who feel this way. In a recently published research from the National Literacy Trust, it has been surveyed that two out of every five American children aged 8 to 18 has actually enjoyed reading in their free time and that 28% of children read daily —a 26% decrease from 2005.
As a person who enjoys writing short stories, I hope the educational system is able to figure out a middle ground between encouraging reading and encouraging education, for if less people read in the future, less likely are people to read my short stories. I know education is supposed to be hard and arduous in order to emphasize students’ intelligence, but what point does intelligence make when students can’t enjoy that intelligence?
