I recently read a couple of fantastic articles in the ‘Free Press’ : ‘Without books we’d be barbarians’. and ‘The Dawn of the Post-literate society..

The TLDR is that there is a massive decline in reading and literacy.

Instead of reading, we’re consuming short form video, youtube/TV and podcasts, and that has major implications for human flourishing intellectually, politically and morally.

A few reasons why the decline in reading and writing is bad :

1. The ability to read means the ability to follow a train of logical thought

There is only so much information you can convey orally or with video. In the article, he gives an example of complex philosophical arguments or scientific writing. This requires having the information on the page, in the form of sentences, that one can follow the logical trail of. You can go back, re-read and form concepts, that is simply not possible with podcasts.

If we cannot follow logical trains of thought, or complex ideas – which reading allows us to do, then we cease to understand the world.

When people stop being able to read—to make sense of the meaning of text on a page—they also lose the ability to make sense of the world.

2. The ability to write is the ability to collate thoughts and create coherent arguments

With a decline in reading, you also get a decline in writing. As many people have said : writing is thinking. If we lose the ability to write, we lose the ability to coherently form arguments.

This is compounded by the advent of LLM’s, where now instead of thinking through a problem (writing essays), you can outsource that to an LLM.

3. The ability to read and write is the foundation for democracy

To be able to articulate your views, without resorting to rhetoric or obfuscation with words is the basis of democracy. To read those thoughts and evaluate them based on the argument itself, rather than biases or rhetoric from the person saying it, is crucial for evaluating ideas independently.

If you want to make your case in person or in a TikTok video, you have innumerable means for bypassing logical argument. You can shout and weep and charm your audience into submission. Such appeals are not rational. But human beings are not perfectly rational animals and are inclined to be persuaded by them.

A book can’t yell at you (thank God!) and it can’t cry. Authors are much more reliant on reason alone, condemned to painfully piece their arguments together sentence by sentence (I feel that agony now).

It’s why we see a rise in pundits, scam artists, populists - they argue based on rhetoric. It’s much easier to convince someone with bad arguments in person, than if the arguments were written down on the page.

Laid out on the page, their arguments would seem absurd. On the screen, they are persuasive to many people.

4. Cognitive benefits and learning

I rarely feel ’taxed’ or ‘cognitively stretched’ when watching a video or listening to a podcast.

But with reading a complex text, you feel a level of mental exertion.

This is good. Like reps in the gym create a strong and fit body that adapts to the increasing load (’thinking of Arnie talking about the pump’), mental effort and strain creates a strong mind.

We’re drowning in an ocean of passive consumption. Previously, when bored, we may have resorted to picking up an instrument, or a book, or socialising or myriad of other activities, now we can pick up the smartphone and passively consume.

In the article, they reference a drop in reading, writing, arithmetic scores in kids since the advent of phones. Similarly with IQ.

The collapse of reading is driving declines in various measures of cognitive ability. Reading is associated with a number of cognitive benefits including improved memory and attention span, better analytical thinking, improved verbal fluency, and lower rates of cognitive decline in later life.

I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone.

Reading is just a more active way of engaging with the material. I see this with podcasts. I’m a huge podcast listener, and when I think at the amount of information I retain when I listen versus when I actively read a book, it is miniscule.

 You may think you are learning from the podcasts you listen to. But I defy you to write down the arguments you heard a week ago, much less the evidence that was adduced in support of them.

You’re just not using the same cognitive muscles when you are listening/watching, versus reading.

It’s not even that we’re going to an oral society, that is predicated on memorisation. Instead, we’re going towards a broadcast society, where information is just passively broadcasted to the masses.

5. Living life twice

For centuries, almost all educated and intelligent people have believed that literature and learning are among the highest purposes and deepest consolations of human existence. The greatest novels and poems enrich our sense of the human experience by imaginatively putting us inside other minds and taking us to other times and other places. By reading nonfiction—science, history, philosophy, travel writing—we become deeply acquainted with our place in the extraordinary and complicated world we are privileged to inhabit.

There is something we get from fiction, poetry, travel writing, good science writing etc.

Reading and writing are tools to understand ourselves, the world and others around us. It provides a portal to feeling, emotion and the ‘wordless’. You can put yourself in the shoes of someone else.

It allows you to ’taste life twice’. It’s difficult to articulate what exactly we get from fiction (if it were easy, maybe it would be non-fiction), but I can say the wisest, kindest and most thoughtful people I’ve met tend to be extremely well read.

Actionable tips

• Delete all social media from your phone (use your laptop if you ever have to access)
• Carry around your kindle or a book and let that be the default thing you pick up
• Write something. For yourself, or publish it on a blog, substack. Whatever to get the habit of writing ingrained. If you do enough bad writing, you’ll eventually get good.
• ‘I dont have time to read’ - the average person has a screentime of 7 hours… use this argument anytime you find yourself strapped for time.