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The "End of Reading" Panic Is Missing the Real Problem — Transcript

by Lady of the Library · 3,467 words · 544 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Today's video is sponsored by
0:01Squarespace, the all-in-one website
0:03platform for entrepreneurs to stand out
0:05and succeed online. A couple of days
0:07ago, The Atlantic published an article
0:09which read, "The end of reading is here.
0:12Optimists once believed that universal
0:14literacy was inevitable. Now it seems
0:17that the age of reading might be a short
0:19anomaly in human history." Now that
0:22sounds terribly dramatic, which will
0:24always get people's attention. And
0:26perhaps I am one of those naive
0:28optimists, but I had a look at this
0:29article. And the article sets the scene
0:32with equal flair. The author opens up by
0:34comparing the loss of the Library of
0:37Alexandria to the evolving statistics
0:39that Americans, whom the data in this
0:42article primarily focuses on, are
0:44reading less in today's digital age. Now
0:47the data presented in the article is as
0:49follows. I'm afraid this is going to be
0:50very nerdy. I do love stats and data, so
0:52there's going to be lots of that in this
0:54video. Apologies in advance. Actually,
0:56not sorry. Become nerdy with me. So
0:58according to the National Endowment for
1:00the Arts, which conducts the most
1:02comprehensive survey of the nation's
1:04reading habits, fewer than half of all
1:07adults reported having read a book of
1:09any kind in 2022, and only 38%
1:13read a novel or a short story. Another
1:16study analyzing 236,000
1:19respondents to the American Time Use
1:21Survey found that the proportion of
1:23Americans who read for pleasure fell
1:26from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. It's
1:31also important to note here what reading
1:32for pleasure meant in this survey. It
1:34meant not just reading a book, but
1:36reading magazines or a newspaper, or
1:38listening to an audiobook, or reading an
1:40ebook. To strike how uncommon reading
1:42is, the author of this article used a
1:44statistic, which is, by contrast,
1:46gambling is a more common leisure
1:48activity than reading a book with 57% of
1:51Americans having placed a bet in the
1:53last year compared to percentages
1:55reading. Now obviously, this sounds
1:57really upsetting, but if we're going to
1:59be honest, I would argue that most
2:01leisure activities would beat reading
2:03hands down if we think of what
2:05constitutes a leisure activity if
2:06gambling is considered one, which it is.
2:09So, that would include walking or
2:10playing a sport or watching television,
2:12drinking, scrolling on social media. All
2:14of that would very much likely beat
2:16reading, and that's not a new This video
2:18isn't about me dismissing any sort of
2:21idea of a reading crisis or the concerns
2:23with literacy, not in the slightest.
2:25But, this is about something else. You
2:27see, I believe that the modern reader
2:29has become so accustomed to our world
2:32that these discussions would benefit
2:34from being reconfigured within a
2:36historical context for us to understand
2:39what is happening and how we may want to
2:41feel about it and look at the situation
2:43a little bit differently with history in
2:45mind, without the need for defining
2:47anything as a crisis as of yet. So,
2:50let's kind of zoom out on this topic for
2:52a second and look at where reading falls
2:55within the history of our social
2:57evolution. Because whilst reading is an
2:59ancient activity with people reading
3:01about 5,200 years ago in ancient
3:04Mesopotamia, literacy skills have only
3:07become widely available since the
3:08mid-19th century.
3:11Because between 1851 and 1900, there was
3:13a rise in British male literacy. It went
3:16from 69% to 97%. But, for the female
3:20part of that population, the improvement
3:22in literacy rates was even more
3:24pronounced. It went from 54% to 96%.
3:28But, that's just Britain. For other
3:29areas of the world, this change actually
3:31happened much later. So, in China, for
3:33example, as recently as 1949, roughly
3:3790% of Chinese women were illiterate.
3:40But, the post-revolution education
3:41reforms and later government outlines to
3:44eradicate rural illiteracy saw that rate
3:46drop to 32% by 1990.
3:50In 1900, the world literacy rate barely
3:53exceeded 20%, but from the 1950s on,
3:56world literacy began to increase,
3:58reaching 42% by 1960 and 70% by 1983.
4:03And as of 2022, the global literacy rate
4:05stood at 87%, which equates to around
4:08nine out of 10 people worldwide. All of
4:11that was to say that the broader general
4:13population of the world has only been
4:15literate for less than 200 years. And
4:18for some, it hasn't even been 100 years,
4:21which is astounding considering how long
4:23reading has been an activity in human
4:25history.
4:26Even then, reading for leisure was a
4:29privileged activity denied to most
4:31people. I did a whole video on the
4:33history of the library if you're
4:34interested, but in brief, after the
4:36First World War, changes to the
4:37publishing industry, coupled with the
4:39growth of public libraries in the 1920s
4:42and the spread of two-penny libraries in
4:44the 1930s, created the new type of
4:46reader, us, the general reader. These
4:49readers were not from elite
4:51institutions, and they did not own a
4:53library. They certainly didn't get one
4:55from their parents inherited down. They
4:57were working-class individuals, and as
4:59such, the general public has only ever
5:02had the fortune of engaging in reading
5:04as a leisure activity for just over 100
5:07years, again, if that. That's just using
5:09Britain as a rough estimate, but most of
5:12the world still didn't for less than 100
5:14years. Think about it. We've been
5:15reading for leisure for less than 100
5:17years. Additionally, what constitutes as
5:20reading has evolved rapidly in the span
5:22of less than 30 years. So, rather than
5:25be restricted to a narrow concept of
5:27just books or texts, reading happens
5:30everywhere. And as such, it's probably
5:32more accurate to say people are reading
5:34more than ever before, not less. It's
5:37not the death of reading because people
5:39read on social media, they read news
5:41websites, they read texts, they read
5:43Reddit, they read emails, instruction
5:45manuals, AI conversations, signs on the
5:47street. most people have to read at some
5:49point in their day for work. People are
5:52more likely to read as an activity than
5:54anything else they do in their day,
5:55percentage-wise, with all the media they
5:58consume. But the question that now
6:00arises is how much do they read for
6:03pleasure? And what is the quality of the
6:05content they're reading? But before we
6:07go any further, I'd like to take a
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7:22So, if we were to define reading as just
7:24reading books or physical newspapers,
7:27people are reading less frequently
7:28compared to a few decades ago when
7:31reading for pleasure became a more
7:32accessible activity for the masses. The
7:34difference that has happened is that the
7:36data suggests the texture of what we're
7:39reading is becoming less coarse, to put
7:42it another way. Analysis by The
7:44Economist in September last year
7:45compared the average word per sentence
7:48in popular books today against books
7:50dating back to 1931. And it found that
7:53sentences had contracted by a third over
7:56that period of time. So, they gave an
7:58example. They looked at the opening
8:00sentence of the Victorian bestseller
8:02Modern Painters by John Ruskin, which is
8:04153 words long. And that was rather
8:07different from the 19 words of the
8:10opening sentence to Let Them by Mel
8:12Robbins. Now, I should state the
8:14obvious. Not all long sentences are
8:16good, just as all short sentences are
8:18not bad. They are just different, and
8:20their effectiveness depends on the skill
8:22of the writer. But, the shortness of a
8:24sentence opens up possibilities for
8:26other questions to have, such as are the
8:29shorter sentences indicative of a
8:31society that's evolving with less
8:33patience? People who want to just get on
8:36with it, who can't handle watching more
8:38than 3 minutes of a video, who rapidly
8:40skim through emails and texts and books
8:42just to say they have read them and got
8:44it over with? And if that is the case,
8:47is this a behavior indicative of our
8:49brains becoming lazier and just wanting
8:51that fast dopamine? Or of our brains
8:54being overworked and over-wired thanks
8:56to capitalistic messaging that tells you
8:59that time is money and that the more you
9:01get done and the faster you get it done,
9:03the more valuable you will become as an
9:06individual. So, discussions like this
9:08over the past few years have been
9:10described as a literary crisis or a
9:12reading crisis. And whilst it's true
9:14that basic reading skills are declining,
9:17we'll come back to that later. Some of
9:18these discussions have taken place with
9:21people sort of misreading the data,
9:23which is why I'm wary of employing that
9:25term casually. A prime example of this
9:27was a trend a couple of years ago with
9:29the male reading crisis, which spread
9:31across social media, despite the data
9:34not actually suggesting that was the
9:35case. There's an article in the Guardian
9:37that debunked a particular one in
9:39Australia. It's very well done. I will
9:41link it down below. But, let's look at
9:43the general population reading crisis.
9:45So, the Pew Research Center, spanning
9:47from 2011 to 2021, came to the
9:50conclusion that Americans read on
9:52average 14 books per year with a median
9:55of just five books per year. It also
9:56showed that university graduates are
9:59more likely to be book readers than
10:00people without university degrees. And
10:03adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are
10:06more likely to read books than adults
10:08over the age of 65, interestingly
10:10enough. And yes, the statistics come up
10:12that women read more than men, but it's
10:15only ever so slightly, and that gap has
10:17remained relatively consistent for
10:19decades.
10:20Because according to Pew's 2021 study,
10:2373%
10:24of men said they've read a book in the
10:26past year compared to 78% of women. And
10:30that was an increase from 2016 when only
10:3368% of men said they read a book
10:35compared to 77% of women. So,
10:38proportionally, the men are catching up
10:40much faster than women are engaging with
10:42reading. Usually, the gender reading gap
10:45is presented financially. There is a
10:46famous statistic, the 80/20 statistic,
10:49and it comes from 1997 when The New York
10:52Times speculated that women might be
10:55buying 80% of fiction books sold, which
10:58is really interesting. But, they made
11:00that claim without actually citing a
11:02survey or where they got that number
11:03from. Despite them not having any
11:06evidence to back that claim up, that
11:07statistic has gone on 30 years, and it
11:10has been recited by other articles and
11:12other online journalists, and it was
11:14even cited in a 2020 book called Why
11:17Women Read Fiction: The Story of Our
11:19Lives by the University of Exeter
11:20Professor Helen Taylor, a correspondent
11:22for Vox. Constance Grady did a really
11:25great deep dive into this last year.
11:26Again, I will link all the articles I
11:28cite below. And the closest she found to
11:30that statistic was information given
11:32over by Nielsen BookData that showed in
11:352017 UK women bought 63% of fiction,
11:39whilst men bought 37% of fiction. Now,
11:42there's two things to note here. Note
11:44one, Nielsen BookData only covers UK
11:47sales. And also, those numbers do not
11:49match the 80/20 split that people keep
11:51citing. But, at least according to UK
11:54buying habits, there was seemingly a
11:56distinction between genders regarding
11:58their buying patterns. But, even then,
12:00Grady doesn't specify in her article
12:02that this data from Nielsen included
12:04ebooks or audiobooks sales, and I'm
12:06assuming
12:08that data also does not include Amazon
12:10book sales, where men may be buying more
12:13ebooks and audiobooks over there, so
12:15they're not included in the data. But,
12:16let's return to a more serious thing,
12:18which is the decline in reading skills.
12:20Now, here the data doesn't look
12:22fantastic. So, the OECD's survey of
12:25adult skills is carried out once every
12:28decade, and the most recent one was
12:302023.
12:31So, for this survey, researchers ranged
12:34160,000
12:36adults in 31 countries and regions to
12:39sit short tests in numeracy, literacy,
12:41and problem-solving. Now, while places
12:43like England actually moved up the past
12:45decade, places like America and Italy
12:47fall below the OECD average. The
12:50statistics in this area are sort of hard
12:52to measure, largely due to migration,
12:54because if basic reading skills decline
12:57over a decade between surveys, it's hard
12:59to determine if that data is due to
13:01literacy skills or declining due to poor
13:03education systems, or if it's due to
13:06more children and adults being accounted
13:08for whose reading skills are being
13:10judged and tested in a second or third
13:13language. However, another article said
13:15that even when these issues of aging or
13:17second languages are accounted for,
13:19literacy scores in a lots of countries
13:21are not faring well. Andreas Schleicher,
13:24the head of education and skills at the
13:26OECD speculates that adults are now
13:30getting less practice than they used to
13:32at reading long and complex texts due
13:34to, you guessed it, social media. And
13:37that makes sense. And I say all of this
13:40>> [laughter]
13:40>> because I think we know. I think many
13:42people are talking about how they are
13:43losing their vocabulary, that they are
13:45finding less patience for books and
13:47reading complicated texts. That makes
13:50sense. But,
13:51the point of my video isn't actually
13:53that because I think all of these
13:56statistics weakens the conversation to a
13:59position of data as a reading crisis
14:02because it usually laments people's lack
14:04of engagement with reading texts. Uh and
14:07it misses a deeper point of this
14:09conversation that I think has a more
14:11powerful
14:13position.
14:15So, the reading crisis conversations
14:17often usually dwindle down to a
14:19conversation that fundamentally revolves
14:20around culture. It is a it's
14:23conversation about a cultured versus
14:25uncultured society, which is a
14:27discussion fundamentally embedded in
14:29sociopolitical class. And as a result,
14:31these discussions can be reduced to a
14:34forlorn sentiment that culture is dying
14:36and people care more about celebrities
14:39than books, which, yeah, sadly is true.
14:42But I repeat, always has been true in
14:44some way according to the time and
14:47environment in which people existed.
14:49What I think would be a more effective
14:51motivator for pushing people to consider
14:53the importance of reading texts is not
14:55this cultured versus uncultured
14:57narrative, but rather to highlight, as I
15:00already hope I have done, how literacy
15:02and access to literature has been
15:04gatekept from the masses for
15:05approximately 96% of the history of
15:08reading.
15:09We are readers because, by pure fluke,
15:12we landed within the 3.8% section of the
15:16world timeline where we are able to
15:18read. Most of us have access to
15:20literature and most of us are taught
15:22literacy skills, which have been denied
15:25to the vast majority of people for over
15:265,000 years. For over 5,000 years,
15:30literacy skills were intentionally
15:32withheld as a tool of oppression and
15:34control. And with that in mind, it
15:36becomes much clearer how it benefits
15:39people in power to publicly belittle and
15:41defund the humanities at universities by
15:44disregarding their importance in
15:46comparison to subjects such as science
15:48and engineering. Now, don't get me
15:49wrong, those subjects are deeply
15:51important, but they benefit society's
15:53capital and allow for a small minority
15:56to concentrate their capital by
15:58benefiting off the labor of others. The
16:00humanities does not do that. Now, this
16:02concentration of wealth and reliance
16:04upon other people's labor concentrates
16:06opportunities and resources among a very
16:09small group of elites. And those people
16:11with money, capital, and resources who
16:13ensure their children receive a good
16:15education at high-performing schools.
16:18Now, publicly on platforms, they will
16:19scoff at the idea that Shakespeare is
16:21important and laugh off the notion that
16:23Latin is necessary, but off platform,
16:25they would be the first to riot if the
16:27private schools that they pay their
16:28children to attend remove those subjects
16:30from the curriculum. The more a system
16:32sends messages that money means
16:34everything, that people's value on this
16:36earth is how much they bring into their
16:38household and how many hours they work,
16:41the more a system will benefit from
16:42other people's overextended labor and
16:45subsequent exhaustion, too exhausted to
16:47suddenly engage with intellectual
16:49discussions. And the people who work for
16:51the system will internalize the messages
16:53that reading isn't worthwhile because it
16:55doesn't make them money. The rich people
16:57scoff at it, so we want to be like them,
16:59we'll scoff at it, too. But that's
17:01because it doesn't make other people
17:03money off their labor. And over time,
17:05people become more resentful and
17:07dismissive towards the humanities as
17:09they struggle more and more financially,
17:12no matter how hard they work, because
17:13the gap of inequality continues to get
17:15bigger. But they're told not to bother
17:17with education because it doesn't help
17:19them get employed, but the kind of jobs
17:21available to them offer little by the
17:23way of social mobility anyway. Out of
17:25sheer economic need for survival, these
17:27people will work harder and harder, and
17:29generation after generation will
17:31perpetuate the narrative that education
17:33is worthless because it wouldn't have
17:34helped them get a better job anyway, and
17:36the market only seems to be getting
17:38worse. So, reading books wouldn't have
17:39helped that, and it's all because
17:41they've internalized the message that
17:42education and activities such as reading
17:45are fanciful wastes of time that have no
17:47place in the money-making world of which
17:49we're part of. Within a few short
17:50decades, the advancements the general
17:52public made when given access to
17:54literacy skills and libraries and
17:56reading will start to undo themselves
17:59because labor is seemingly more rewarded
18:01to people like them than education ever
18:04was. I find this all terribly sneaky
18:06because the new way to deny people an
18:08education or literacy skills is not to
18:11deny them access to them, but to teach
18:14them that they're not worth anything.
18:17Yet, we can see from history that
18:18literacy levels has had a monumental
18:20impact on the lives of individuals.
18:22There's a reason there was a huge
18:23advancement after the general public got
18:26access to that. Since the mid-to-late
18:2819th century, we've only gone up from
18:30there. And these skills have played the
18:32greatest roles in people overcoming
18:34oppression and liberating themselves and
18:36making up avenues for themselves,
18:38building their own businesses, and
18:39becoming independent. So, we can
18:41distract ourselves with rather silly
18:43conversations about reading crises, one
18:45which bemoans the popularity of genres
18:47deemed lower level such as romantasy or
18:50YA, or children engaging more with
18:52social media than books. But the real
18:54reading crisis is more how messages
18:57about the alleged unimportance of
18:59literature in an academic world are
19:01underhandedly chipping away at people's
19:03liberties and confidence in order to
19:05reposition them back into an
19:07intellectually vulnerable place where
19:09they are more susceptible to
19:11exploitation, oppression, and
19:13manipulation.
19:14What do I know? Don't ask me. I'm just a
19:16girl. Thank you as always for watching
19:18today's video. I hope you enjoyed it. If
19:20you did, please consider giving it a
19:21like or subscribing or even joining my
19:23Patreon. Thank you to all my Patreons
19:25for making this possible and
19:27particularly my top tier Patreons. We
19:28have Holly is Autistic, Joshua Heredia,
19:31Gill the Gilded Dragon, Lady of the
19:33Labyrinth, Ellen, Eric Taylor, Yvonne
19:36and Yvonne, Jenny Edevane, Marina, Wee
19:39Lauren, Nicholas Reed, and Andy Brazil.
19:41Thank you all so much as always. Thank
19:43you all so much as always and I hope you
19:45are happy and healthy and remember,
19:47books save lives. So, keep reading.

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