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Writer argues the age of reading has ended · INSIGHT TODAY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Let's pivot to this. When is the last time you
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: read a book?
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: No comment?
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  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, okay, is it that you just haven't
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  Speaker 3: read one recently or you can't remember.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: That I finished?
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  Speaker 2: So this is a lot of research for my job.
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  Speaker 3: Well that's what we all say to each other right
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  Speaker 3: when we don't have time to read books.
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  Speaker 1: But you might be proving this next guest point.
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  Speaker 3: The author of this article is sounding the alarm over
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  Speaker 3: what she calls.
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  Speaker 1: Quote the end of reading.
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  Speaker 3: Her piece sites a study that determinate decline in reading
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  Speaker 3: cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels here in
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  Speaker 3: the United States. And joining us here in the broadcast
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  Speaker 3: center this morning is the author of that piece, Rose Horowitch.
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  Speaker 1: Who is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Good to
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  Speaker 1: see you. Thank you so much for having this made me.
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  Speaker 3: Incredibly depressed because, as Kelly said during the commercial break,
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: I also.
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  Speaker 1: Spent my time as a child in libraries, in bookstores.
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  Speaker 3: One of my favorite things to do when I was
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  Speaker 3: a young teenager, you know, preteen, was to have my
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  Speaker 3: parents drop me off at the mall instead of going
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  Speaker 3: to like Chess King or the you know the places
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  Speaker 3: that you know were popular back then. I would just
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  Speaker 3: go straight to Barnes and Noble or Walden Books and
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  Speaker 3: just park myself in an aisle and find a book
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  Speaker 3: that I, you know, couldn't afford because we were not
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  Speaker 3: very rich and we were poor is the word I'm
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  Speaker 3: looking for. And I would just sit there and read
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  Speaker 3: that book, and I go back every week to try
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  Speaker 3: to finish that book until or I would find it
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  Speaker 3: at the library anyway that long syloqually, just to say
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  Speaker 3: that reading still remains to be a fundamental part of
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  Speaker 3: who I am and what I'd like to do when
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  Speaker 3: I'm not inundated with work.
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  Speaker 1: What did your research find? So?
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  Speaker 4: My research found that there has just been a sharp
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  Speaker 4: decline in reading across age levels, across the genders, across
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  Speaker 4: socioeconomic status. As you mentioned, they share of Americans who
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  Speaker 4: read a book or even an article on any given
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  Speaker 4: day has declined by forty percent in the past twenty years.
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  Speaker 4: I know it in the piece that gambling is now
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  Speaker 4: a more popular leisure activity than reading.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, that's okay, that's horrifying. You argue that AI and
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  Speaker 2: other technologies have made focused reading all but impossible. Why
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  Speaker 2: is it that we're always just well, something else can
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  Speaker 2: tell me? Or I can look at my phone.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, that was something that I really wanted to note
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  Speaker 4: in the piece is that you know, we might be
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  Speaker 4: reading more words than ever when you think about messages
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  Speaker 4: we get and emails and you know, Reddit posts and
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  Speaker 4: just everything that we're taking in all the time, but
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  Speaker 4: that reading so many words has actually taken away from
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  Speaker 4: our ability to focus for an extended period of time
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  Speaker 4: on you know, a rich and complex text.
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  Speaker 3: So you wrote that before the newspaper, the novel itself
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  Speaker 3: was seen as a threat to good reading habits. You
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  Speaker 3: said that Thomas Jefferson even thought that one of the
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  Speaker 3: greatest obstacles to education was educating women, when when it
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: came to the greatest obstacle to educating women was their
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  Speaker 3: passion for fiction.
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  Speaker 1: Obviously that has changed.
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  Speaker 3: And what I find remarkable is, for example, young people
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  Speaker 3: today who say that they can't read a book like
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  Speaker 3: Clockwork Orange, for example, because they think it's written in
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  Speaker 3: old time English.
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  Speaker 1: And we're not talking about Dickens here.
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  Speaker 3: This book was written in the nineteen I think in
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  Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties, right right, And I know that there's
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  Speaker 3: a particular language that's used in the book to use
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  Speaker 3: you know that he invented. Burgess did a type of slang,
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  Speaker 3: but anybody with a couple of brain cells can figure
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  Speaker 3: out what he's trying to say.
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  Speaker 1: It is remarkable that now you are.
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  Speaker 3: Facing a broad section of the population that not only
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  Speaker 3: doesn't read, but they can't even string proper sentences together.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, and so I spoke with someone who works at
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  Speaker 4: Harvard who was saying that their students now sort of
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  Speaker 4: more and more report seeing reading is kind of an unnecessarily.
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  Speaker 3: Difficult way to take an information.
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  Speaker 4: When AI can summarize everything for them, and so they're
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  Speaker 4: sort of having to convince them much more that like, no,
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  Speaker 4: there is something really important about reading the whole thing,
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  Speaker 4: seeing the words that the author wrote themselves and not
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  Speaker 4: getting this short summary. So it's really a change in
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  Speaker 4: attitude as well.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is is so sad because I
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  Speaker 2: mean I grew up reading. You know, I went and
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  Speaker 2: I picked out Dickens or the thrills that you would
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  Speaker 2: get from the smell of a library book that hadn't
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  Speaker 2: been taken out in a while is something though that
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  Speaker 2: I can't, like, I cannot find the fortitude to sit
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  Speaker 2: down and get through a book that. Being said, I
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  Speaker 2: have years and years and years of having done that.
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  Speaker 2: I'm okay, I know that I can read. But in
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  Speaker 2: your piece that you know, you suggest that what we
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  Speaker 2: are losing is potentially the ability to think critically, to
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  Speaker 2: think for ourselves.
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  Speaker 1: Can you expand on that?
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  Speaker 4: Yes, So you know, as you were saying, you know
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  Speaker 4: what we've seen that you know, adults today, they used
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  Speaker 4: to really like reading, and you know some of the
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  Speaker 4: things that were sort of most nerve wracking to me.
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  Speaker 4: I was writing this piece with the statistic that like
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  Speaker 4: only two percent of American adults read to a kid
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  Speaker 4: on any given day, and so we definitely can expect
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  Speaker 4: that this is only going to intensify in the years
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  Speaker 4: to come because the younger generation is much less interested
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  Speaker 4: in reading. And yes, as you say, you know, we
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  Speaker 4: know that reading is kind of this way of taking
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  Speaker 4: in information where you have to go down the page.
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  Speaker 4: It's you have to take it in kind of logically.
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  Speaker 4: It trains your analytical skills if you're really thinking about it,
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  Speaker 4: and so that is at risk now.
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  Speaker 3: I do there's nothing that gives me greater joy than
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  Speaker 3: walking into my three year old's bedroom and in the
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  Speaker 3: morning and to find her holding one of her books.
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  Speaker 3: And she doesn't read yet, but she has memorized the
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  Speaker 3: pages because she likes the same books over and over again.
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  Speaker 3: And I'll walk in and she'll be like telling herself
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  Speaker 3: the story while turning the pages.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: That's how much she loves to read. And I think
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  Speaker 3: all many children start out that way. The question is
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  Speaker 3: what happens when they get a little older. To your point,
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  Speaker 3: I think what ends up happening is oftentimes reading books
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  Speaker 3: has felt feel like a chore because books are assigned
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  Speaker 3: in school, and you start to lose the love that
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  Speaker 3: you had when it was just you choosing the books
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  Speaker 3: versus a book that has been assigned to you.
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  Speaker 1: And yet there is still, like.
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  Speaker 3: You pointed out, Kelly, that you know, even certainly my generation,
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  Speaker 3: the books that we read were still like those old
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  Speaker 3: classics like Dickens, like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and
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  Speaker 3: gull Over Travels and those types of books. And I'd
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  Speaker 3: be happy with just kids getting to read the latest
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  Speaker 3: Daniel Silva novel and getting through that as a way
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  Speaker 3: to encourage their love of reading.
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  Speaker 1: Is that something that educators are thinking about.
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  Speaker 4: So we definitely know that the books that people do
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  Speaker 4: read are shorter and simpler than they used to be.
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  Speaker 4: I spoke with the head of the New York Public
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  Speaker 4: Library who was saying that young adult fiction is their
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  Speaker 4: most popular offering, even among not young adults.
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  Speaker 3: Because Kelly has read every single Harry Potter book that's
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  Speaker 3: ever been written that's for young adults?
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  Speaker 1: Is it not.
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  Speaker 4: A lot in there? Okay, so comfort please, And so
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  Speaker 4: you know, I think that there, you know, educators are
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  Speaker 4: maybe thinking about, Okay, how do I kind of scaffold
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  Speaker 4: and you know, help students read. But it's more so
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  Speaker 4: just that there are just fewer and fewer books being
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  Speaker 4: assigned as school and so students just aren't being asked
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  Speaker 4: to do that. They're more being asked to read excerpts
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  Speaker 4: and kind of practice reading comprehension drills, and so it's
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  Speaker 4: not even coming up quite as much.
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  Speaker 3: All right, Rosemorrow, which really really insightful piece. Thank you
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  Speaker 3: very much for coming on and talking about it.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having si