I tell people that I read, but I don’t as much as I used to; not like when I was 12 years old, hiding under the bedcovers with a flashlight and a “Nancy Drew” mystery, hoping my mom wouldn’t notice because I was supposed to be asleep hours ago.
In high school I noticed it was harder to get invested in a book, let alone one I was reading outside of classwork. I chalked this up to my life getting busier as I got older, which was partially true.
Into adulthood I increasingly contemplated why my memory wasn’t that sharp, why I wasn’t easily motivated in creative outlets and why it took me so long to finish a standard-length novel. It’s because I’d traded the physical for screens; everyone did.
Neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath told the Washington Post that Generation Z is “the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized academic tests than the one before it…They underperformed on basically every cognitive measure, from basic attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function and general IQ.”
Horvath linked this decline in intelligence directly to the fact that Gen Z is the first generation that grew up with constant screen time, both at home on personal devices and in school with educational technology.
While many Gen Zers, including myself, have become more aware, much of the damage has already been done. With the rise of artificial intelligence, everything is more convenient, quicker and shorter than ever. We no longer need to read or write much – Meta offers you a summary of direct messages, emails give you premade response options and Grammarly always thinks it knows best. We have been primed for illiteracy packaged as convenience, and we’re not doing anything about it.
In Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” (1953), they don’t start burning books until people stop reading them. They don’t stop reading them until the books are condensed into minutes-long summaries. Lack of engagement with the text invited a lack of critical thinking, so no one cared when they started burning the books. They cannot get you to stop thinking if they cannot get you to stop reading – (text-posts and headlines don’t count) – short form content programmed us to think less, and neuroscience proved it.
There are some infamous TikToks showcasing people bragging about reading an absurd number of books in a brief timeframe. This is because they’re not reading books; they’re reading summaries on apps such as SoBrief. SoBrief.com is currently the largest “book summary platform,” offering thousands of AI-summarized novels so users can “read any book in just 10 minutes.”
Does that sound familiar?
Bradbury was not the only author who foresaw this future. Roald Dahl, in his short story “The Great Grammatizer,” (1954) and Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel “Player Piano” (1952) eerily describe postmodern societies that rely on machines to read, write and think for them.
Colorado Springs Charter Academy English educator Victoria Hershman said that Generation Alpha isn’t reading – not because they can’t, but because they won’t. The intentionality and focus it takes to read novels has been replaced with irritability and lack of attention span in a screen-rotted brain.
“Books require effort on a lot of different levels: deciding words and untangling imagery,” said Hershman. “This generation, having grown up around information that has been easily accessed and readily available to them without having to put in effort, lacks the brain power to read and understand when reading.”
The problem is not limited to the quantity of books Gen Z and Alpha are reading, because reading and writing influence our critical thinking capabilities. Hershman said this bleeds into every other school subject.
Every aspect of our lives is ultimately affected by how much we are exercising our minds. When I changed the imbalance in my life, I could already feel myself thinking more clearly. My screen time went down and my enjoyment in other things, like reading again, increased.
Limited time in the digital world and more encouragement and discipline to utilize our own faculties might just stop the intelligence decline. The future doesn’t have to look worse, so don’t let your kids be dumber than you.
