By EVANGELINE FOSTER ’29
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 25 Sept 2026
Reading levels in the United States (US) are declining, causing a nationwide literary crisis. The US Department of Education released an article on Sept. 9, 2026, stating that twelfth graders today have record breaking low reading scores, and nearly “70% of 4th and 8th graders cannot read proficiently.” Professor of Philosophy, Dr. Benjamin Lipscomb explains this to be “a deep literacy crisis.” The US population is struggling to hold the attention span needed to work through “a complicated argument or policy, question, or body of evidence or epic poem or long novel.”
Dr. Jesse Sharpe, Associate Professor of English, believes that distraction is the number one contributor to this crisis. Lipscomb agrees, saying, “The media environment, intensifying in the past couple of decades, has been one in which ubiquitous devices work on our psychology to draw us more and more away from books, fragmenting our attention.” Elementary education student Paige Sliwa ‘29 passionately believes that short form content like YouTube reels is detrimental to literacy, finding that it causes a lack of attention span and isolates people from human interaction, one of the primary ways children learn to be literate.
A decline in literacy is a problem beyond knowing how to read well. Low literacy rates negatively impact other subjects in school. Sliwa says, “In school you don’t just have to learn to read, you have to read to learn.” A student who is unable to read proficiently cannot understand math word problems or write a science lab report.
Sliwa does acknowledge that “when used correctly, technology can be a useful learning and teaching tool.” In the classrooms she’s worked in, programs like “i-Ready” meet children at their skill level, something classroom teachers cannot always accommodate for. Teachers also cannot always work with kids one-on-one. If a child has completed their work early they can use “i-Ready” to continue learning while the teacher is busy, making better use of school time.
Social media stifles sustained attention which suppresses creativity. An article by the Atlantic, “The End of Reading is Here,” notes brain scans done by Dr. John S. Hutton showing that children from 3 to 5 years old used their imagination half as much watching an animated video versus a static picture paired with audio. When children do not have as much information given to them, their imagination is used to fill in the gaps.
TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have the same effect as the animated videos in Hutton’s study. These platforms flood us with curated content, which can create an illusion of perfection and hinder creativity, possibly magnifying one’s fear of failure. But “you can’t develop creativity without failing,” Sharpe says. The internet is stiflingly full of endless options of perfect ways to accomplish goals, tasks and projects. Sharpe goes on to say that before social media, “the options were whatever you could come up with,” but the “continual presentation of options makes it harder to settle,” fracturing our attention.
According to Lipscomb, “there’s nothing hopeless about our predicament.” He notes that there has been research done on brain plasticity and how the practice of repetition builds proficiency in a skill. For instance, when someone begins running it takes practice to build endurance and become a better runner. Making time to speak and interact with children can make all the difference. Literacy provides children with future opportunities for their careers, communications and relationships. Sliwa believes public libraries are great resources for anyone interested in building literacy skills because they are free and available to all, and suggests that parents make visiting the library a weekly affair where the parent reads to their kid and vice versa. Children gain literacy just as much, if not more, by oral communication as reading. ★
