The decline of reading is a business decision

We are consuming more information than any generation in history and understanding less of it.

The OECD’s second Survey of Adult Skills, published in December 2024, tested adults across 31 countries. Literacy and numeracy had largely declined or stagnated over the previous decade; average literacy improved in only two, Denmark and Finland. Writing in The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch argues in “The End of Reading Is Here” that we are becoming not illiterate but postliterate: still surrounded by...