Opinion | This Isn't the Age of Illiteracy. Not Even Close
- Woke historian slaps down 'post-literate' panic, says Americans are reading plenty—just not in the dusty paper format your grandpa loved.
- Author's doom-boomer book review trashed as 'literacy anxiety' while TikTok essays and hyperlink rabbit holes allegedly count as mental gymnastics.
- Don't worry, you're not illiterate; you're just 'differently literate'—a new participation trophy for the screen-addled set.
- Study of centuries of panic shows every generation thinks the next one is turning into drooling morons; spoiler alert: they never do.
- Deal with it: the death of reading is just the death of reading as a status symbol for the elite.
Brief Summary
A credentialed historian rolls up to the 'reading is dead' pity party and pours cold kale smoothie on the whole affair. The rebuttal to that gloom-and-doom book review argues that literacy isn't vanishing; it's merely shape-shifting into memes, subtweets, and 3 a.m. Wikipedia spirals. This isn't the collapse of civilization, folks—it's just the old guard realizing they're no longer the gatekeepers of what counts as 'real' reading. The past was no golden age either; every era had its own panic about the youth and their newfangled scrolls. So, put down the smelling salts, clutch your pearls elsewhere, and accept that the human brain is just rebooting its OS, not dying.
Why This Matters
For you, average screen addict, this is a free pass to stop feeling guilty about highlighting a 2,000-word Reddit thread instead of Tolstoy. It's a cosmic 'I told you so' to every boomer who's ever shushed you for reading your phone at dinner. The real danger isn't that you read less, but that you're still paying attention to wealthy authors who profit from your panic. Ignore the ivory-tower navel-gazers; your ability to parse sarcasm, verify fake news, and follow an endless thread of comments is the new literacy, and you're a damn savant.