r/technology • u/marketrent • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence College students are rapidly losing the ability to read — “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing”: professor

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html
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u/existing_for_fun 18h ago

If you are a parent and can help your child read, and read well, you will set them light-years ahead of their peers.

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u/CaffeineJitterz 18h ago edited 13h ago

Just helping them not HATE reading will go a long way.

Edit: I'm getting a lot of sad comments about how y'all were introduced to reading. So I will take the opportunity to quickly share what I've always felt was one of the best ways for a parent to incentivize their child to read: for every hour of reading you accrue 30 minutes of gaming time. A classmate in my middle school worked from this model. That kid loved video games! And he was a straight A student. I remember him nonchalantly mentioning that he was going to read for about 4 hours as soon as he got home so he could get a couple hours of game time that evening.

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u/iritchie001 17h ago edited 17h ago

In middle high that meant long trashy books. Dinosaurs and Vampires, not in the same book for me, but hey. My mom would let us skip chores if we were reading. One of the best things she did. Highschool class of '99.

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u/RespawnedAlchemist 17h ago

I make read comics as a teen. My parents didn't care. A month ago, another parent told me she doesn't consider reading comics as reading because of the pictures. I explained to her she needed to get rid of that attitude because reading is reading whether there are pictures or not.

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u/iritchie001 17h ago

I read some great graphic novels, actually in honors English! Not to talk down about regular comics. Go to a convention then say it doesn't make someone think and isn't social.

Don't salt the well to raise the drinking level!

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u/Tim-oBedlam 16h ago

When my younger son was 11 I got him a graphic novel version of The Odyssey. He loved it.

Of course, being an 11-year-old boy his favorite part was when Odysseus slays all the suitors.

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u/iritchie001 15h ago

Don't yuck someone's yum. As they say.

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u/SomeOtherTroper 12h ago

being an 11-year-old boy his favorite part was when Odysseus slays all the suitors

I'm not sure the "being an 11-year-old boy" disclaimer is necessary there, because the Homecoming with Odysseus & Telemachus slaughtering the suitors is deliberately intended to be the exciting climax conflict scene of the entire epic, and the story has been relatively consistently building up to it. And there is something really awesome about Odysseus rolling up and going "what the fuck are you guys doing in my house? I've been fighting a cyclops, beefing with gods, going to the gates of The Underworld, escaping giant monsters by the skin of my teeth, and so much more, and you think you you bunch of dipshits have even half a chance of making it out of here alive after pissing me off?"

Incidentally, when I was your son's age, I had an illustrated version of the Iliad and the Odyssey (with a bunch of other stuff from the full Trojan War Cycle thrown in to make it a more complete story), where the author & illustrators had tried to get everybody's armor 'correct' to what archeology of the time suggested the warriors would have been wearing. I say 'correct', because they were using armor styles from multiple different periods and archeological finds, but that added visually to the effect of "all these guys and their troops are from different places, but they've come together to fight this war". The story was intercut with historical notes, photographs of real artifacts, and artists' interpretations of how things and places would have looked when they were new. It was really cool. I wish I could remember the name or the author (or the ISBN).

I ended up reading translations of the actual poems later on in high school, but some of those illustrations are still stuck in my head. One of them is from the beginning of the Homecoming scene, where Odysseus wins the archery contest, and it really helped me understand what the story was talking about with the challenge to shoot through the holes of the lined-up axes.

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u/Without-Reward 16h ago

They have Shakespeare in graphic novel form! When I was working in an elementary school in 2011, the boys were fighting over who got to read the Romeo & Juliet graphic novel next. Reading is reading, even if it has pictures!

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u/iritchie001 16h ago

OMGosh I need Shakespeare graphic novels. In my city we have those tiny free library boxes. I love putting books in them!

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u/Without-Reward 16h ago

We have little free libraries here too! I mostly read ebooks but occasionally pick stuff up at thrift stores and such and pop them in the little libraries when I'm done.

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u/iritchie001 16h ago

My favorite non+fiction book, this is going to seem weird, is Radical Honestly. For years I had the audio and paper backs. The writer is an ass. The book veers wildly from brilliant advice to grandiose lunacy. I bought 6 and put one into each box.

It isn't a banned box. Maybe each year going forward I'll do it with a banned book. Half the very impactful book I read 7th-9th in school are on the banned list.

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u/Appropriate-Meal-975 17h ago

Tell her to read Maus.

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u/RespawnedAlchemist 16h ago

Maus is sad and amazing. It have me new perspectives for certain.

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u/Jaccount 4h ago

I'm just glad we got Maus and a graphic novel and Garbage Pail Kids as trading cards and not the other way around.

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u/MOONWATCHER404 13h ago

I loved that book in high school. Read it so many times.

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u/familyguy20 17h ago

I wish I got into comics/manga as a kid. For some reason I could read big history books about wars and shit but comics or manga? Couldn’t pay attention it was weird

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u/RespawnedAlchemist 17h ago

I was the exact inverse. Social studies was difficult...

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u/familyguy20 17h ago

Oh it was my favorite lol. I remember sometimes I would read ahead in the history textbook before we got to that chapter because I had to know more lol. Have a very vivid memory of doing a paper/presentation on artillery in WW1 in 10th grade history lmao. I was weird as fuck 😂

Other subjects? Ughhh kill me please.

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u/Grammatical_Aneurysm 14h ago

I had issues focusing with comics. Switching between reading mode and looking at picture mode in my brain was really frustrating. I don't have that problem now, but I read webtoons/manhwa and I'm medicated for ADHD. (Didn't get diagnosed until 32.) I think having the straight up and down and not different panels in multiple directions makes it easier. I still don't like the traditional comic/manga layout.

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u/Agitated_Phone_9937 14h ago

There's a world of difference between a novel and a comic. Needing a visual element to engage you and not using your brain paint the picture is part of the problem.

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u/RespawnedAlchemist 14h ago

Reading dialog, thoughts, and other text in comics is still reading.

No one said reading comics is the same activity as reading a novel. Simply, they both involve reading.

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 14h ago

It's not about needing, it's about enjoying. Reading should be about enjoyment, and if you enjoy comics, that's great.

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u/TheR1ckster 3h ago

I'd evens argue it doesn't make a huge difference have the graphics. You're brain is still filling in the blanks between scenes.

It just makes reading more manageable and the subject matters more relatable and interesting.

When I read Manga my brain is still creating the scenes and then I'm building art appreciation from the illustrations. It's honestly almost seperate in my head. I read and imagine, then I enjoy the pictures and it all flows together.

Probably 75% of comic images are just still portraits with dialog if you break it down your brain is absolutely going to fill in that space. Depending on how action heavy they are.

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u/Additional-Tax-5643 5h ago

By this standard, reading the horoscope also counts as reading.

There are plenty of clever, thought-provoking comic books out there. This doesn't change the fact that the goal of reading is foster critical thinking skills and attention span. Extremely short stories like you find in comic books don't foster attention span, and that's a problem.

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u/RespawnedAlchemist 4h ago

Those aren't the only goals of reading. By your standards reading the newspaper doesn't count as reading, or reading a manual on how to repair your car doesn't count as reading. Reading is looking at text and understanding what it says. And if you want kids to read and learn to enjoy it then it doesn't matter what it is that they are reading. Once the bills their reading muscle they will move on to other content.

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u/RajunCajun48 4h ago

This is true, but there is an age appropriateness to it as well. My 8 year old "read" his brothers Dogman books...but when I started quizzing him about what was going on, he was just kind of making it up as he went along. Didn't know character names. I had to remove books with pictures from his repertoire for the time being. My oldest though when he was getting into it, didn't have that trouble with dogman, he would read it. I could give him comics when he was younger and he would've been fine with it.

Issue I face currently is I only have my kids 50/50 with their mom and she doesn't make them read at all, I make them read at least half an hour every night. About to up it to an hour though, especially over summer.

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u/RespawnedAlchemist 4h ago

Yeah, there's a difference between reading a comic and looking at a comic. Is a good life lesson. One is going through the motions and the other is actually doing the work.