The daunting subject of the literacy crisis in the United States has been brought up once again after The Atlantic’s August 2026 Issue Cover featured Rose Horowitch’s “The Age of Reading Is Over.” In the extensive essay about literacy in the US, Horowitch asserted that we have entered the ‘postliterate era,’ arguing that we are beyond the state of literacy. Horowitch’s declaration garnered nationwide attention, especially with the provocative nature of how she wrote her essay, writing that “under very different circumstances, the darkness is gathering again” after explaining the burning of the Library of Alexandria centuries prior, and the subsequent shadow cast over reading and literacy at the time.
I previously covered the literacy crisis in 2024 in an Op-Ed piece titled “Man Make No More Read Books: The Declining Literacy Rates in America.” In the article, I examined the statistical data found by the National Center for Education Statistics between the 2017-2023 period, finding that only 28% of the group surveyed were consistent with their appropriate reading level, indicating a decrease in scores when comparing the two years. Even compared to the 2024-2025 statistics by the National Literacy Institute, less than half of US adults can read at their appropriate reading level, while 54% struggle to comprehend beyond the 6th grade reading level.
The alarm is evident in Horowitch’s article, with her sharing an experience with a board member of the American Association of School Librarians in which, “she and her fellow librarians had to buy new books to accommodate students’ diminished reading levels.” The diminishing capabilities of the younger generations to understand the texts beyond its literal level has forced upon a shift on both education and current literature quality.
Horowitch highlighted a specific case with the struggle of a Harvard student, who struggled to understand A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. The novel was written in 1962, but in no means was it written in Old English, as claimed by the student. One of the many notable qualities of literature before the postmodern works was its lengthy paragraphs and language that they used, but 50 or so years shouldn’t have caused this large of an impact on students and their understanding of literature. Burgess’s opening paragraph does not invite the use of ChatGPT to “translate” the texts into something more digestible. It’s straightforward and comprehensible: “‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’ There was me, that is Alex, and my three dogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.” This brings up the question of why do we need to adjust the texts to accommodate people’s inability to understand rather than further enforcing the practice of reading?
Editor’s Note: I was able to get in contact with The Atlantic for an interview, but unfortunately we were not able to find ample time to schedule an interview.
In a brief chat that I had with Magda Samborska, an independent author, they shared their recent experience with a publisher who rejected their manuscript. The problem? The publication firm said that it was because of “today’s readers,” specifically Gen Z. In the email exchange that Samborska shared, it read, “They have the attention span for short-form content, not a challenging, layered story that asks them to think. I believe it would have had enormous commercial potential 10 or 15 years ago, when literature was much more demanding.” In the exchange, it was explained that today’s readers prefer familiar stories, popular tropes and simple plots. Ultimately they said that Samborska’s novel “asks too much from the reader” in regards to the current market of what book “sells” the most.
Today’s quality of books is what I would describe as underwhelming. While most books remain plot-driven and eye-catching– falling into the words of Samborska’s publishers, “familiar”– the depth of its writings fall between shallow and plain. It’s easier to understand, but it does not challenge the reader to analyze the concepts. I reached out to the Seattle Public Library and got in contact with Elisa Murray, SPL’s Communications Strategist, who shared interesting data with me regarding the popular books over the last year. Most of these books, from June 2025 to June 2026, still follow national trends. Teen Fiction in print and e-book editions have Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins as the most checked-out book over the last year, followed by A Court of Thorns & Roses by Sarah J. Maas.
Teen fiction still remains popular among younger adults and is one of the top read genres apart from romance and mystery/thriller. The texts cannot academically compare to books such as All The King’s Men by Robert P. Warren or George Orwell’s classics like Animal Farm or 1984. While the information from popular modern books is not always spoon-fed to the readers, the reading aspect of challenge and thought-provoking remains at large.
This brings up a recent internet debacle over the rise of popularity of R.F. Kuang’s works, specifically her 2022 novel “Babel” to which most users shared on the internet that her writing is heavy-handed. In a 2025 Substack review by the user Soaliloquy, they criticized that “Babel is comprised of an offensive amount of exposition,” stating, “I honestly believe you could cut out 100 pages of lore and be better off it.” The review mentioned “how little the author believes in the intelligence of her audience” as one of their frustrations while reading the book. Her book included citations by the author to guide them during the reading process and compared to many modern fiction books, it was critiqued to be written more of an essay than a novel. The implication of the citations and expounded writing about the history and lore of the book invited opinions that questioned the needs of this explanation to the readers, “Why do we need this information?” or “Why was this even included?”
The answer: Context.
Being able to contextualize words on a page is what begins the process of reading. This phenomenon of the age of reading being over is agreeable and evident with the many shared experiences and data that helped conclude to this point. Reading remains a hobby to many, the activity in and of itself is not dead, but what is common among all of these is the lack of treating reading as an art form.
Most find reading as a burdening task, especially in college, but I would still often find myself asking the question, “Do you like reading? What book did you last read?” during dates or hangouts with new friends. Disappointingly enough, their responses remained the same: “I don’t know when was the last time I read a book.” I think the most interesting response I had was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, but they explained that it was a required reading in high school. Often, it was suggested to me by other students about how easy it was to use Gemini and ChatGPT to summarize a chapter of a textbook or compile lyrics of a song (Yes, even a song). Even scrolling through social media, most “Book-toks” have complaints from users about how they would much rather skip the “long paragraphs” and just read the dialogue. None of these helped the case. Even during my time in school, I noticed the transition from being required to read the entirety of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe to only being handed printed excerpts of popular texts or essays. This greatly affected my personal journey, as I am no exception to this evolution.
One of the challenges to overcome is finding the motivation to pick up a book rather than a screen that has copious amounts of entertainment. What’s a few hundred pages versus endless videos to interact with? Previously, I read about 5-10 books a month that consisted of multiple genres. Some were difficult to get through while others flowed smoothly in my eyes, but I find myself more attracted to Netflix or Instagram. Recently, even when I have tried to read, I would be distracted by the sound of my notifications and end up scrolling for 15 minutes after picking up my phone. Nowadays, I would be lucky enough to read a few chapters each week, barely finishing three books in a month. The library no longer became my favorite place in the world, replaced by the comfort of my bed and a glaring screen until 1 in the morning.
It was when I was cleaning up my bookshelf that I dropped Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being on my foot, full of annotations from when I was 16 and 19 years old. The frustrations over the text, my evolving opinions after transitioning towards the older adolescence and my old keen interest in thinking while I was reading rather than sifting through words on pages. Going through the same book three years later, my present thoughts differed from the past, and I decided to sit on the side of my bed and read a few chapters. The book hitting my foot woke me up from a trance of the digital age and convincingly enough, I began to pick up a few books to read every other week.
We are just reaching a turning point in this cycle where discussions are more rampant because of how the lack of literacy is now affecting student performance in schools. This is not the fault of a specific person, company or community. We can point fingers that it’s the publishing industry’s, the students’ or educators’ faults, but that will not disrupt the evolution of society towards the digital age that the reliance towards readings is no longer a need.
The intimidating descriptions written in Horowitch’s article, such as the claim of how entering the postliterate age welcomes the idea that “things are about to get worse, and fast” is not catastrophizing the situation. This is not an end-for-all situation. The interaction with reading is still steady. People still read online posts, news articles, etc. This literacy crisis has been actively discussed by scholars and researchers since the modernization of technology. It is safe to say that reading as an activity is in no means on the verge of extinction, but what Horowitch argues falls into the art of reading as a form of learning– a thought-provoking and analytical process to digest words beyond their literal meaning. Whether literacy will continue to decline or not is only something time can tell, as we traverse education through this postliterate age.
