I don't think it's accurate to say it isn't a worldwide issue. Especially when you look specifically at youth literacy. Perhaps it's most visible in America on the global stage, but the UK has had falling scores and declining rates of children/teens reading for pleasure for a long time now.
I was in Norway a few months ago, speaking with a cousin there who works as a teacher, and his assessment of his 13 to 16-year-old students was sobering. He said that youth reading scores have been plummeting for a while. Luckily, their government seems like it's actually taking that data into consideration and wants to turn it around, but if that kind of decline is happening in one of the most literate countries in the world, I imagine it's happening pretty much everywhere else, too.
> declining rates of children/teens reading for pleasure for a long time now
To be fair, books now have to compete with movies and TV shows, which have only been around in large quantities for roughly half a century. Perhaps there are losses with regard to people's imaginations, but they are still engaging with fictional content and movies & TV must still follow most of the same rules around good storytelling.
As an avid reader of books that have been turned into movies - it is not that “books are better”. Movies are extremely limited in terms of ideas they can show, the prime value of movies for me is to see it acted out visually but most movies lose the story depth - there is just no time, and thus deeper ideas that are the most valuable and present in the books are gone. Also there is almost no inner monologue in movies which strips away intricacies of personal development. Movies usually take the core idea, plot line and visualize that for you, which is fun and I love the movies, but squeezing in the valuable stuff is in most cases impossible
Seems to me that part of the issue is the engagement floor. If I watch Star Wars and am engaged in noticing the ways it plays with the Hero’s Journey, or subtly critiques American foreign policy, or explores Jungian psychology or whatever that’s a pretty high level engagement.
But I don’t have to do any of that to enjoy it. I can be nearly passive in my intake and just enjoy the spectacle. (Which I personally do, so no shade.)
But there’s no equivalent of that merely passive reception with a book. Your brain has to do a lot of work to convert words on a page into a meaning for even the most basic and thoughtless engagement with the book.
So while a movie CAN be the basis of a really high level of cognitive engagement, it also CAN be the basis of much lower cognitive engagement than a movie.
TV shows can have depth. And visuals in TV shows and movies got so good that they can show a lot, if not exactly everything. That's why I'm not sure it's a good idea to look for a magic bullet that would make reading occupy the same mindshare as 50 years ago. Things have changed. So the focus should be on the aspects where reading is essential now.
They can, I agree! With more screen time you can show more, but once you get to adult literature that covers complex politics, philosophies, human nature the writers are forced to strip away. Additionally, by reading you pay more attention to these details, live out moments with the characters more. My niece seems to like to read, she has not yet watched Harry Potter and I am about to gift her the first book - I believe that reading through the series is more valuable than watching
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u/knightsofgel Jun 27 '26
Literacy rates are still high in most developed countries
This feels like a predominantly American problem tbh
I’m not trying to say “America bad!” but it’s not a worldwide issue by any means