of course the people are reading!

you're doing it now. perhaps more than ever before

This is the sixth in my series of short, quickly written, weekly philosophy essays.

There’s much talk of a reading crisis. The standard version of the central claim here is that ‘the people are giving up on reading’. There’s a stronger version, which you’ll also recognise, according to which the ‘death of reading’ has already occurred. And there are various weaker versions, too, which I’ll discuss below.

But I’ll begin by focusing on this idea that ‘the people are giving up on reading’, because it’s the standard claim and it seems crazy to me.

It seems crazy to me because I find it obvious that reading is extremely central — likely more central than ever before — to the modern world. I find this so obvious that I never thought I’d write about it, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably needs to be said. Moreover, saying it will give me the chance to make a bigger point towards the end of this piece.

I want to begin by asking how, exactly, you became aware of these claims that the people are giving up on reading? Presumably via the internet, where you — and most other people — spend a great deal of time reading! I mean, even the sites and apps that are typically blamed for the ‘giving up on reading thing’ are extremely reading-intensive.

For a start, Twitter is almost entirely about reading! Okay, it features increasing amounts of short-form videos — a trend that typically takes a large part of the ‘giving up on reading’ blame — but those little videos almost always seem to include text! So my guess is that we can count Facebook and YouTube, and even Instagram and TikTok which I know little about, as quite reading-intensive, too.

The next point I want to make is that most people spend a great deal of their time, nowadays, sending text messages. Whether at work or at leisure, they spend many hours messaging with other people via email, or WhatsApp, or various other sites and apps. Increasingly, they are even assessing and selecting their potential partners via reading about, and messaging them, online, rather than through in-person social interactions!

Now, I haven’t said anything too controversial so far. But I’ll be upfront at this point and admit that I’m not very interested in doing or reading empirical work on any of this.

Isn’t it almost undeniable that people in the past spent more time on oral conversation, though? Or, at least, that if we didn’t have all these options for sending each other messages in text form, that we would spend more time on oral conversation, ourselves? That said, of course, my overall argument doesn’t depend on me being right about this kind of counterfactual! All I need to do is persuade you that reading is alive and well — that the people are not, in fact, ‘giving up on it’.

Okay, okay, the young people love sending those silly little voice notes. But I bet they’re often scrolling the wordy videos while they listen to them! And I haven’t even mentioned the LLMs yet. Whether you’re constantly messaging with GPT, or just engaging with AI via Google search, what are you doing? Reading words, words, words!

I could carry on, but you’ll have understood by now that my basic argument is that a great deal of the time that people are spending looking at their screens, they are reading words.

Sure, these people are sometimes — maybe even often — also looking at moving or static pictures. But it seems undeniable that most of the time there are, nonetheless, words on the screens, and that the people are reading them. There’s been a well-documented rise in switching on the subtitles, for instance. And even when you’re watching a sports game broadcast — whether it’s in a bar, or on your phone — there are words to be read, on many parts of the screen!

Now, some people like to claim that there’s been a gradual decrease in reading across the past century or so, which has correlated with the gradual introduction of new forms of entertainment tech. First it was the radio, they say, then it was the TV, and now it’s the internet with its memes.

But these people should remember that listening to the radio did not involve reading any words! Sure, perhaps you might have read the brand name on the device, but that’s hardly the same as all those words zooming past, zoomily being read, on all those little videos on the social media apps! It also seems important to note that watching TV was far less reading-intensive when the subtitle function was reserved for foreign-language programming or people with hearing problems. Whereas, surely, the Internet memes pretty much always include words!

I’ll stop at this point because you’re probably dying to fire some objections at me.

First of all, I should respond to the idea that ‘reading is more than just reading words’, or something like that. Ha! Good luck with that one! And beyond that kind of hilarity, my assumption is that most of the objections you’ll want to fire at me will represent a weakening of the original strong standard claim. The claim, that is, that ‘the people are giving up on reading’. In which case, go for it! I’ll take that as a win for the first part of my piece.

Sure, some of you might want, instead, to point me towards data suggesting that the picture I’m painting is inaccurate. Fine! I’m always keen to be persuaded toward the truth. But do be aware that I won’t be easily convinced by polling that depends on nebulous questioning. Or by the idea that people are just watching the videos and ignoring the words. Yeah, right! Just give that a try! Overall, my general response to many of these kinds of objections is likely going to be: “Just look around you. Aren’t the people busy reading?”

That said, one standard weakening of the original claim, which I should definitely address, would shift the focus entirely towards children. “It’s not that the people are giving up on reading in general, Rebecca! It’s that the kids aren’t reading any more.”

Well, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about what the kids are doing. But I do know that most of the people who will make this reduced claim will combine it with the claim that the kids are spending more and more time looking at screens. In which case, I’d refer these people to my point above that looking at the screens typically involves reading a lot of words!

Okay, perhaps the kids are looking at very different things on their screens from the adults. But my bet is that most — or at least, much — of the time that the kids are looking at their screens, they are reading words, too. I mean, don’t even video games include lots of words? And isn’t there a whole thing about the kids messaging their friends while playing video games?

I’ll conclude by assuming that when most concerned parties are pressed further on these kinds of matters, they will reduce the opening strong claim that ‘the people are giving up on reading’ (whether this claim is being made in reference to adults, or kids, or adults and kids in certain parts of the world, or whatever) to a focus on either, or both, of the following two things:

1. the nature of the things that are being read

2. the form of the things that are being read

They might say, “The reading that the people are doing is not edifying!”, for instance. Or, “The people should be reading more books!”.

Well, these are hardly new claims. You’d have heard the same objections to the rise of the penny dreadfuls and the comic books, and all the other popular reading crazes. Yet the claims made today typically suggest that reading is declining ‘more’, or in some special sense! Beyond pushing on the relative nature of these contemporary claims, however, one response I have to the “they should be reading more edifying things!” people is to ask whether they are opposed to the idea of reading for enjoyment. This should make them pause.

And one response I have to the “they should be reading more books!” people is to ask exactly why they think this. I mean, one standard response I often hear is that reading books is essential, or at least particularly valuable, to the development of analytical and comprehension skills. Indeed, that the opportunity to develop these skills is the key instrumental value of reading books — rather than, say, some value deriving from the way in which books have the capacity to express a lot of facts, by virtue of their length.

But if the development of analytical and comprehension skills is what you want people to gain from reading, then I’m not sure why books would be your hero. I’ll set novels to one side, for now, and take time to emphasise that most non-fiction books are very flabby and repetitive. I’m happy, here, to assert that this has pretty much always been the case regarding the majority of non-fiction books, but that this is particularly easy to conclude about contemporary non-fiction books.

Now, I assume this is largely a function of their length (the central feature that differentiates the book!). But I find it rare these days, for instance — outside of the world of highly technical academic books, which have many of their own correlative and special problems — to find non-fiction books whose authors aren’t simply offering you three ‘key’ points in the introduction, and then the opportunity to have these three key points lobbed at you, again and again, over the course of the rest of the book.

Sure, some books’ authors go notably against this trend, and manage to combine tight argumentation with ‘through composition’, in such a way that ‘having relatively great length’ becomes a good thing.

But if what you want reading to induce is the capacity for analysis and comprehension, then my bet is that reading well-argued short tight articles would serve most people much better, most of the time. Particularly those people who are early on in developing these skills! And I’d have a similar response to anyone who would, at this point, turn to the supposed particular value in reading books for ‘developing focus’. Why books? Why simply reduce time spent to length of text, for instance, if it is focus you want?

Now, of course, perhaps in mourning the supposed decline in reading you are not, in fact, signalling your support for the idea that books help people to develop skills around analysis and comprehension and focus. Perhaps you are not focusing on that kind of instrumental value, at all. Perhaps, instead, you are worried about the death of a much-loved industry, or the sterile appearance of non-book-readers’ houses. Okay, fine! But then you should be clear about that.

Or perhaps you didn’t mean non-fiction at all, and it is novels that you want people to be reading. In which case, I refer you to my question above about where you stand on the value of gaining enjoyment from reading. And I’d also ask why you are preferencing the novel. If, of course, your answers come back to points about developing focus, and comprehension, and so forth… well, there we are again!

And if you want, instead, to say something grand about novels helping us to understand what it is to be human, well, can’t you do that by reading what the people are saying on social media? “Oh, but that is less focused! It won’t help us to analyse or comprehend…” Sorry, I love reading fiction books more than doing most things, but I don’t think this route is going to help you win the argument.

I’ll end by saying that I love reading books, more generally, and that I hope very much they survive, as a form. My bet is that they will, mostly for the relatively boring reason that they look nice. But the underlying aim of this piece has been to signal the value of working out the underlying point of the big claim. What is the point or points that other people are really making? What is the point or points that you want to make?

What is it you think is really going on? What is it that’s worrying you?