How television, the internet, smartphones, social media, and now generative AI are accelerating a decline in people reading longer works like books

The Atlantic 2026-07-10 Rose Horowitch

Context & Ripple Effects

The related coverage traces a broader shift in how text is produced and consumed: AI text generators were already expanding the supply of machine-written material, while newer coverage places generative AI among several media technologies competing with sustained attention.

This matters to publishing because the issue is not only the quality or volume of AI writing. The reported change is in the reader habit that supports long-form works, potentially tightening the link between attention fragmentation and the economics of books and other extended text.

First-order effects

Publishers, authors, and booksellers face a more difficult environment for works that require sustained reader time, as the reported decline in long-form reading accelerates.
Generative AI becomes another channel for short, on-demand text consumption alongside internet and social-media formats, rather than simply a tool for producing books or articles.

Second-order effects

Publishers may put greater emphasis on discovery, serialization, excerpts, audio, and other formats that lower the commitment needed to start a work, increasing competition for attention beyond other books.
The expanding supply of AI-generated text can compound the problem for human writers: more content competes for limited reading time while making it harder for audiences and buyers to distinguish professionally authored work.

Third-order effects

If the pattern persists, publishing could increasingly split between a smaller market for deeply engaged long-form readers and a much larger market organized around brief, continuous, personalized media consumption.
The durable industry question will be whether generative AI erodes demand for sustained reading itself or mainly changes the routes by which readers discover and consume long-form work; the related coverage supports pressure on the former but does not resolve that outcome.

The trend: This is one data point in the convergence of always-available, algorithmically delivered media toward shorter and more continuous forms of consumption, with generative AI increasing both the supply of text and the competition for attention.

Discussion

@andrewdlewis Andrew D. Lewis on x
Stunning read by @rosehorowitch on the Cultural decline of reading as part of the American intellect. Big implications downstream for future Gens. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@metzgov Bryan Metzger on x
i've always felt sort of lame describing “reading” as a hobby or interest of mine. after all, isn't that just something everyone does? well, increasingly, not really. from @rosehorowitch's piece on the decline of literacy in The Atlantic [image]
@yuanyi_z Yuan Yi Zhu on x
I thought the author was dooming too hard, but then I went to the Comments section of a piece I did for a newspaper and came to realise most of the pundits BTL could not parse relatively simple English prose.
@joshkraushaar Josh Kraushaar on x
“Trump is our first postliterate president. It is difficult to imagine him being elected leader of a country where information is primarily spread through text.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@stevemorris__ Steve Morris on x
Not exactly original but thinking recently about what's left of the supposed advantage of being a college-educated white-collar professional. The implicit deal of giving up knowing how to work with your hands was that your brain was nurtured and structured to read and think
@_zeets Zito on x
Blows my mind that people allowed tech companies to convince them that they didn't need the simple and critical abilities of reading, writing, and being able to think on their own. That passively consuming short form video content and giving up your brains to LLMs was freedom.
@jonathanchait Jonathan Chait on x
“The literate era will prove to be a brief interlude between the oral and digital ages.” @rosehorowitch has written an essay that will be remembered for years. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@sfmcguire79 Steve McGuire on x
At Harvard, a student thought A Clockwork Orange was written in “Old English” and used AI to “translate” it. Others “view reading as an unnecessarily burdensome way of acquiring knowledge” and think professors who ask them to do it are “arbitrarily withholding information.” [imag…
@dominicjpino Dominic Pino on x
American public education is a 13-year program to make people hate reading, and it is very, very effective.
@tinywriterlaura Laura Elliott on x
this whole article is well worth a read but this section certainly does make me understand twitter a lot better. there are a number of people on here using a text-based social site when they can't properly parse written text, and so they miss the point and start arguments [image]
@afinetheorem Kevin A. Bryan on x
The fundamental problem here is that schools and universities *ask* students to read less. We don't have to do this! You can in fact assign as much reading as you used to a decade ago, and test on it. Do your part to uphold the culture, gang.
@tahrahoops @tahrahoops on x
This was a harrowing read. The rise of the post-literate age is bleeding into liberal democracies. Devoid of nuance, it creates slopulism and easy villains. The best way to trounce your opponent is to hold on to your version of simple truths to achieve power over broken systems. …
@brandyljensen Brandy Jensen on x
somewhat funny to decide to summarize this long story by using bullet points with bolded text for the important parts
@aatif_rashid Aatif Rashid on x
Pretty bleak article for a lot of reasons, but the big thing that stood out to me as a teacher is how schools are actively making the reading crisis worse by reducing the number of books they assign in high schools. [image]
@benkrauss5 Ben Krauss on x
This is really sad, but it should also encourage anyone who wants to get a leg up in life to take reading and thinking critically about the text your reading seriously! Just because everyone stopped doing it doesn't mean it won't help you personally/professionally. Every smart
@spencerklavan Spencer A. Klavan on x
If present trends continue, they mark not the end of reading but the end of mass literacy, turning books back into what they used to be: the special super-weapon of a minority class whose mental powers, I propose, will outstrip those of the average mind as greatly and
@bobbyfijan Bobby Fijan on x
This summer my 11, 9 & 7 year old are required to read for 2 hours every day. Any book they want AND I pay them for every one they finish It's so important that kids learn the discipline and also to just cram a whole bunch of stories in their minds. [image]
@mviser Matt Viser on x
THE END OF READING IS HERE Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history. Just a phenomenal piece of writing, which is worth a read, from @rosehorowitch: https://www.theatlantic.com/ …
@dkthomp Derek Thompson on x
The Atlantic's new cover story by @rosehorowitch is absolutely definitive on the end of the age of reading in America—and the emergence of a new post-literate age in modern life Some core facts and anecdotes: 1. Reading is shrinking. The share of Americans who read for pleasure
@taylorlorenz Taylor Lorenz on x
Great piece but the headline is misleading and I worry will make it harder to address the problem at hand. People are reading more than ever per the article, they're just losing comprehension skills. That seems like a much more difficult problem to fix https://www.theatlantic.com…
@andrewaoyama Andrew Aoyama on x
If reading is over, then how come this, by the great @rosehorowitch, is so compulsively readable? Makes you wonder... https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@brianstelter Brian Stelter on x
Marshall McLuhan once predicted we'd wind up in a “post-literate” world. And now we have arrived, @rosehorowitch argues in a brand-new cover story for The Atlantic, “The End of Reading is Here.” https://www.cnn.com/...
@annbauerwriter Ann Bauer on x
“Literacy created the conditions for inner concentration, extended focus, and logical deduction. It allowed for a new kind of rational, linear, and analytical thought.” That's what we're giving up by not reading. Concentration, focus, logic. It shows. https://www.theatlantic.com/…
@thestalwart Joe Weisenthal on x
Everyone's getting Meyrowitz and Ong-pilled https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... [image]
@annbauerwriter Ann Bauer on x
“Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text.” I share @DKThomp's horror. It's the primary reason we created @Storyaliz. We're determined to make a difference but it's an uphill battle. Even free users just don't read. At all.
@cszabla @cszabla on x
atlantic “end of reading” piece may be the first I've seen to connect mockery of “performative reading” to the decline of the humanities as part of the lost status of literacy as short form video influencers become “the guardians of culture” [image]
@maxwelltani Max Tani on x
is this bad? [image]
@ashleyrparker Ashley Parker on x
Somehow, in @rosehorowitch's fantastic (and depressing) Atlantic cover story (!) on our postliterate age, I find this stat to be the most gutting: “In the study of 236,000 American adults, only 2 percent read to a child on a given day.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@charlottealter Charlotte Alter on x
Absolutely harrowing @rosehorowitch story about the End of Reading. We might be on the verge of a new Dark Ages. We're probably already there. [image]
@sketchesbyboze @sketchesbyboze on x
The most disturbing anecdote in this essay is from a grade-school teacher saying that on their first day of school kids used to cry because they missed their moms, and now they cry because they don't have their tablets. If this isn't fixed, it means civilizational collapse.
@kristinaparts Kristina Partsinevelos on x
“Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.” 😞 https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@emmabgo Emma Goldberg on x
sending this extremely good @rosehorowitch story to my friends who made fun of me for remembering to bring Middlemarch to Mexico City but forgetting to pack any socks https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@adriennelaf Adrienne LaFrance on x
New in The Atlantic this morning: an extraordinary cover story by @rosehorowitch. If you're generally only reading tweets, emails, texts, and machine-generated sentences, you should really, really read this story (and after that, a novel!): https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@nick_field90 Nick Field on x
“I had a student who had a very strong reaction to starting school,” she said. “Typically, students cry maybe the first couple weeks and say they want their mom. But this student would cry for her tablet.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@robkhenderson Rob Henderson on x
“Text is thriving among a dwindling proportion of the population. Just 20 percent of adults accounted for more than 80 percent of all books read last year. It's becoming a kind of niche hobby, like stamp collecting or growing orchids” https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@sketchesbyboze @sketchesbyboze on x
“Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book.” This is just unimaginably bleak. [image]
@athenaeumbc @athenaeumbc on x
The situation is so much more desperate than you probably realize. University professors are saying they're now unable to teach history because reading long books and passages is how a person learns history. Their students are simply incapable of reading more than a few pages.
@moshik_temkin Moshik Temkin on x
Our elites are proudly trying to take us all back to the Middle Ages, when only a cloistered few scholars knew how to read, the masses toiled and died young in crushing poverty and illiteracy, and a few wealthy overlords owned all the land and lived in decadent castles.
@nickbaumann Nick Baumann on x
I see what you did there, @rosehorowitch: https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... [image]
@bencjacobs Ben Jacobs on x
This has gotta be sponsored content for @rosehorowitch's feature in the Atlantic today
@eigenrobot @eigenrobot on x
have we accounted for immigration here. because that seems likely to be relevant 🤔
@eggerdc Andrew Egger on x
a clarion call from @rosehorowitch https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@joycecaroloates Joyce Carol Oates on x
evolving consciousness of Homo sapiens: turning away from literacy. was it predictable? is it inevitable? from an objective viewpoint we have to conclude that whatever is, simply is. however, Homo sapiens is not distributed evenly throughout the world. cultures rise, reach
@daveweigel David Weigel on x
The point here about what books *are* selling is so depressing. People walk past Roth and Faulkner and Bellow to read YA Elf Slop IX: An Elven Wedding https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@bigmeaninternet Malcolm Harris on x
If you are interested in working on or otherwise supporting a decentralized pro- reading project/social intervention, fav this tweet. Especially if you're in Philly https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
@roddreher Rod Dreher on x
Mass disinterest in reading is a gift to future totalitarians. True, Germany was a highly literate society when Hitler came to power, but he solidified his power through radio, which had far more emotional immediacy, and discouraged reflective thought. Weimar America is here...
@clivedavisuk Clive Davis on x
“It's becoming a kind of niche hobby, like stamp collecting or growing orchids.” From @rosehorowitch's piece in @TheAtlantic on the decline of reading. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... [image]
@owroot O.W. Root on x
We are leaving modernity and its mass literacy and moving into something else and something older. We are returning to tradition! The tradition of illiterate peasants, to games, to bread and circus!
@allegraehobbs Allegra Hobbs on x
You MUST actively combat the deterioration of your own brain!! I've started turning my phone off for hours at a time. I put it in another room while I'm reading. I set aside time to read for pleasure and do it even when it feels challenging because my mind is ping-ponging.
@nathanjrobinson Nathan J Robinson on x
ok but it's better not to read at all than to read The Atlantic
@bethanyshondark Bethany S. Mandel on x
A short distillation of why we homeschool the way that we do. I would venture 90 to 95% of what our kids do is read a book and then tell us what they read.
@tonyannett Tony Annett on x
This is bad. Democracy emerged alongside mass literacy. What happens when this goes away?
Jacob Soll Jacob Soll on linkedin
All of my research shows that the great periods of economic expansion and development are linked to reading and literacy which also spike empathy …
Rose Horowitch Rose Horowitch on linkedin
The share of Americans who read a book or article on any given day has fallen by 40 percent over the past two decades. …
@joshlukedavis.com @joshlukedavis.com on bluesky
this is an astonishingly good - if fairly depressing - read, especially as you see yourself reflected back in parts — www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ 202...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on bluesky
Fwiw I have found myself subscribing to even more journalism and newsletters largely in the belief that simply reading long text documents now gives you a simple and definitive advantage in the world [embedded post]
@mjgault Matthew Gault on bluesky
I appreciate how considered this is, full of caveats and asides and complications, but it has the stink of moral panic to me
@michaelby @michaelby on bluesky
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ 202... So lengthy as to almost make the title a self fulfilling prophecy! However, its not inaccurate, unfortunately.
@anthonypainter Anthony Painter on bluesky
Ngl this left me downbeat. Not new but seeing it laid out like this. — 1. New forms of media inevitably crowd out older ones — 2. A healthy democracy relies on the thought processes flowing from structured written word — How can we retain space for slow aside fast? — www…
@aramsinn Aram Sinnreich on bluesky
And here I am, just grinding away, writing books, like a sucker.
@cethanleahy.com Cethan Leahy on bluesky
This is a good article. My one pushback is the final paragraph suggesting that we won't have another Library of Alexandria situation where all that knowledge gets lost. I think we are alarmingly close to that happening with digital media as we speak.
@robertcruickshank.com Robert Cruickshank on bluesky
Glad that this article mentions that schools are no longer really teaching literacy - teachers are increasingly barred from assigning whole books, and screens are replacing books.
@vanderhoofy Erin Vanderhoof on bluesky
i have my quibbles with this, but the thing about kids not knowing nursery rhymes is totally true and SO WEIRD to experience in person. the kids i taught mother goose stuff too ask me for it every time they see me!!!! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ 202...
@tobyn Toby Nangle on bluesky
All this, about writing, resonates strongly. — And as the author goes on to say “Writing is hard because the writer is learning. If AI eliminates the challenge, it also eliminates the learning.” — www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ 202... [image]
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