In the cover story for the July edition of The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch declared that “The End of Reading Is Here.”
The article is, by my estimation, more than 5,000 words, so Horowitch better hope at least some people are still reading or its argument is destined to go begging.
It’s a big argument, essentially that we’re in the midst of an epochal shift in how people consume information, a shift predicated on the one-two punch of the internet and now artificial intelligence. First, we’ve been habituated to bite-sized texts like, well… texts, Reddit, email and Instagram captions. Second, we now have technology that can process long texts for us in a simulation of reading.
Looking at the state of things, Horowitch outright declares, “America, in other words, isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.”
While I have expressed my own concerns about this issue over the years, I think it’s important to remember that nothing about reading, the act and experience of an individual encountering a text produced by another human being, has been changed whatsoever in recent years, or perhaps really ever. Whatever short form online media offers, it isn’t reading. I won’t argue that reading is superior necessarily — OK, yes, it’s better — but even if one disputes this, reading is different.
Which is to say, if there is a problem, it is with readers, not reading.
By all available data, Americans are indeed reading less as part of their leisure activities. This decline has been happening for decades. In 1992, according to research by the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly two-thirds of Americans read at least one book outside of work or school. That percentage dropped to less than half by 2022.
However, this trend is not necessarily an inexorable effect of technological changes in society. By way of comparison, the number of Spaniards who read a book outside of school/work has increased from 57% in 2010 to 66% in 2025.
This suggests something deeper in American culture that has made leisure reading seem less desirable or less valuable.
There are probably a lot of factors working simultaneously. Our reflexive habits with technology likely play a role, as we turn to the frictionless experience of scrolling on a screen because of its ease and accessibility.The way we treat reading in school, unfortunately reducing it exclusively to “decoding” in early grades, and then a hunt for main ideas to be extracted by a standardized assessment, is a factor and something I saw in my own college-level students.
We can, for sure, nibble at the edges of the problem by encouraging people to put their phones down or reigniting passion for literature as part of what we should be experiencing in schools. I don’t know why we let helping students love reading leave the curriculum.
But if we wish for a more durable movement back to reading, we have to create an atmosphere more conducive to reading, where we collectively signal that reading is all the things reading is: fun, instructive, useful and unique in the way it allows us to commune with other human intelligences.
We need more dedicated support for public discussion about books, including in book reviews, which, as I’ve written previously, are steadily disappearing.
We need to give the people who introduce new generations to reading — parents and teachers — the necessary time and space to explore this process with no end attached other than cultivating a habit for reading that will endure.
Reading is one of the great pleasures of my life. I’m 56 and can’t remember when this wasn’t the case.
How many young people would center pleasure as a reason to read?
Maybe that’s where we should start.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” by Bill Bryson
2. “Julian” by Gore Vidal
3. “52 Pickup” by Elmore Leonard
4. “Bad Monkey” by Carl Hiaasen
5. “Guys Like Us” by Tom Lorenz
— Mike R., Crown Point, Indiana
Mike specifically has asked for a laugh-out-loud page-turner. This is a high bar, but I’m going to go for it with “Hark” by Sam Lipsyte.
1. “The Moving Target” by Ross Macdonald
2. “The Soul of a New Machine” by Tracy Kidder
3. “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter” by Peter Orner
4. “The Demon of Unrest” by Erik Larson
5. “Polostan” by Neal Stephenson
— Warren T., Sacramento, California
This is a good fit for one of my favorite thrillers that’s also a novel of ideas: “Lexicon” by Max Barry.
1. “Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic” by Kenneth R. Rosen
2. “This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark” by Craig Fehrman
3. “Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor” by Christine Kuehn
4. “The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom on the World” by Tilar J. Mazzeo
5. “Prisoner: My 544 days in an Iran Prison — Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out” by Jason Rezaian
— Jerry N., Naperville
Kudos to the book designers who can get these subtitles onto book covers! For Jerry, I’m recommending “Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon” by Robert Kurson.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
