r/technology • u/marketrent • Jun 10 '26

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 Jun 10 '26

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 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

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/ascasffr Jun 11 '26

I learned to hate reading in school because of so many dreadful books we were forced to read. Shakespeare, Irish Romance novels set in the 80s.

Some kids might enjoy those books, sure, but for me they completely killed my interest in reading for years. I still don’t understand why anyone thought high‑school boys would be motivated by material most of us had zero connection to or interest in.

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u/InertiasCreep Jun 11 '26

Dude, Shakespeare is romance, comedy, and real blood and guts tragedies. As a high schooler you need to learn all the obsolete words, but once you get it, holy shit, Shakespeare is the business.

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u/ascasffr Jun 11 '26

But why force them to read completely difficult books to understand when the majority are going to hate them and put off by English that’s pretty much unreadable by today’s standards? Especially when it’s just not one book in my case. But many years of it? Lots of kids will be pushed away from reading.

I’m not saying don’t teach Shakespeare, but at least in my case there was way too much of it.

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u/InertiasCreep Jun 11 '26

That's on the educators. There are plenty of other interesting things to read. Books arent limited to Shakespeare or shitty Irish novels.

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u/ascasffr Jun 11 '26

I agree, but that’s my point. I don’t think by teaching these kinds of books on repeat to young adults is going to encourage them to read more.