The end of reading? Let the python videos roll.

Spoiler alert: The canal got dug.

I’ve always been a plodder when reading books. Still, I used to knock one out every couple/three months.

To be true, McCullough’s “John Adams” moved more smoothly. And there are lots of confusing French names in the first half of the canal book, which caused me to frequently flip back a few pages wondering, “Who is this guy again?”

I’ve come to realize my attention span and concentration are toast.

Like many others, I’ve developed a rabbit brain, hopping about from subject to subject. Sitting down to absorb an extended flow of ideas and concepts on the written page is now more difficult.

Part of my aversion to reading longer works is because I read a lot for my job: Articles, reports, studies, police reports, court documents, social media rants. At day’s end, there’s only so much enthusiasm to continue reading.

Credit: Screengrab of AJC TV promotion

Credit: Screengrab of AJC TV promotion

It’s like a mailman doesn’t want to go for hikes on his downtime.

Free time, a time once reserved for pleasure reading, is now consumed by social media fodder. Somehow, the algorithms have decided I want to watch videos of old boxing matches, contentious police traffic stops and pythons fighting capture in the Everglades.

The dopamine from watching Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward batter each other, or bounty hunters wrestle with 20-foot snakes, keeps me scrolling my phone. Then, 45 minutes of my life is gone.

And I’m dumber for it.

(Speaking of clueless, in 2007, then-AJC business reporter Scott Leith had a brand-new invention, the iPhone, and was showing it off to a pack of fellow reporters. He then demonstrated how you could call, send messages or even surf the web. I waved it off. “Who wants the internet on their phone?” I said.)

I’m not alone in my flagging reading habits. Last week The Atlantic magazine ran a long article headlined “The End of Reading Is Here.”

It says that reading scores for students are dropping, and the amount of time devoted to reading — by everyone — is dwindling. There’s a worry about a population of mush minds.

The article, which ironically has been widely read, pointed to a National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored survey that found just 48.5% of American adults read a book of any kind in 2022, down from 54.6% in 2012.

Another study analyzed responses from 236,000 participants to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey. It found the number of those reading for pleasure on any given day dropped from 28% in 2004 to just 16% in 2023. (That included reading a book, magazine, e-book or newspaper or listening to an audiobook. Those numbers sound low to me)

The Atlantic pointed out that, oddly, we probably now read more words than ever, bouncing from emails to texts and social media posts to AI slop. But this is cognitive flotsam and jetsam, not the carefully constructed and researched thoughts and concepts brought forward in longer-form writing.

Last month, Tyler Jagt, who teaches e-courses for Georgia’s university system, wrote a piece in The Chronicle for Higher Education entitled, “My Students Can’t Read. The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.”

Ouch.

He wrote that he assigned students a 20-page paper to read, like he had done for years. Not one of them finished it, he wrote.

Student complaints: The assignment was too long. It was hard to stay focused.

Jagt noted that his pupils had cleared the universities’ admissions process, adding, “Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.”

“There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires,” he continued.

I could not reach Jagt, but I spoke with Peter Smagorinsky, a retired professor of Language & Literacy Education at the University of Georgia — and member of the Reading Hall of Fame. (Yes, there is such a thing.)

There are many theories about why reading has dropped off, he said, although there’s no consensus.

Some theories I’ve read are: The explosion of cellphones and social media. Learning time missed because of COVID. And the refusal to hold kids accountable, by both parents and teachers.

Some 15 years ago, Smagorinsky taught a class for incoming football players at UGA.

“One of them said, ‘I don’t know why we have to do this, you don’t have to read anymore,’” he recalled.

It was prophetic.

“Technology has made it easier for people to do easier things,” Smagorinsky said. “The text is so short; there’s video. It normalizes what you expect in a piece of writing.”

Which is not much.

“Offloading thinking to devices means people are not challenged enough, and being challenged grows your mind,” he said.

Use it or lose it.

And, it seems, we’re losing it.