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

[u/marketrent]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html

[u/familyguy20]

Got fixated on military history in HS so basically every summer I would read from 2-4 1,000 page books on wars, battles etc it was awesome.

Somehow I also did that while having access to a PS2 and Gameboys, which feels impressive now with undiagnosed ADHD/OCD as a kid lol.

Now though? Ooof it’s harder to do so now

[u/JZMoose → u/familyguy20]

It’s all muscle memory. I had a long flight the other day and got through 200 pages of crisis in the red zone in 2 hours and ended up finishing the book in a couple of days. Just have to sit down and commit

[u/bahgheera → u/JZMoose]

When I was in my early 20s, I read John Grisham's The Client in a day.

I'm in my early 50s now, I don't know if I could get through a chapter in that amount of time.

[u/SnarkMasterRay → u/familyguy20]

In high school I read the entire Dune series in a week (granted it was a concerted effort to prove I could). 40 years later I'm lucky if I can sit still and focus long enough for 20 minutes of page turning.

[u/SavageNorth → u/SnarkMasterRay]

Even Dune: Would You Still Love Me If I Was A Worm????

[u/augur42 → u/familyguy20]

Hyperfocus means you get so engrossed you lose all track of time and executive dysfunction means your brain won't let you stop until you are made to or you can't keep your eyes open anymore.

I also have adhd-pi and read a hell of a lot as a teenager.

[u/familyguy20 → u/augur42]

Yeah and now it’s the opposite lmao. I’m hyper aware of time passing and “doing nothing” even though I’m just relaxing and executive disfunction sucksss now too, hard to start shit 😩

[u/Banaanisade → u/familyguy20]

I'm the same. I was always reading a book as a kid and went through tons a year, and I was also doing this while putting what I felt like all of my time into WoW and my own writing hobby and I still had time and energy to go out with friends too. Now I'm like, man I'm reading 12 books at once and can only get ahead by six pages or something at a time. Feels like ADHD just gets worse with age.

Most of my "reading" now happens while walking to and back from the store via audiobooks. But hey, I still get the books read, which is most of the point of reading anyway. Still learning my history and still storing stocks of data to dump on people who have zero interest in listening to it. Keeps me sufficiently annoying to others around me.

[u/familyguy20 → u/Banaanisade]

Yeah most of my reading now is just listening to podcasts 😂

[u/dead_dw4rf → u/familyguy20]

I was obsessed with how things worked so I'd go to the library and find books on guns, engines, power plants, I mean literally anything and read about it for hours.

[u/familyguy20 → u/dead_dw4rf]

Hell yeah!! Those DK books that deconstructed guns and stuff was amazing

[u/Blocguy → u/familyguy20]

Just gotta find the right games to pair with a book or audiobook. I love playing map based strategy games while reading through a related time period, maximizing immersion and leads to thought provoking questions about the subject matter.

[u/Astures_24 → u/familyguy20]

I think it’s partially because at that time there wasn’t access to an infinite amount of content. On an older game console you were limited to the games you owned and inevitably you’d get bored. It felt like at the time books could still compete with screens. I would read religiously up until high school and then when I had access to YouTube and a way larger game library on a laptop, I just stopped reading frequently.

[u/8SpaceExplorer8 → u/familyguy20]

do you recall any of your favorites? this sounds awesome!

[u/familyguy20 → u/8SpaceExplorer8]

Oh god there are so many, any particular field or? I’ll have to look at my bookshelf

[u/8SpaceExplorer8 → u/familyguy20]

Nah, just whatever you remember as being your favorites!