Literacy is in Decline. Here’s how we Revive it.
This column from the FT is doing the rounds on LinkedIn.
Literacy is in decline and it’s hitting teens and adults alike. We peaked in 2012 and went into a tailspin ever since. I think we’re generally not surprised to see these results and - speaking personally - this data dovetails nicely with Stolen Focus (have i mentioned that I’m reading it? Maybe columnist John Burn-Murdoch read it too) discussing the decline in literacy, empathy and attention spans since the growth of Social Media and the Big Tech monopolies in our lives. If your critical thinking and intellect is semi-intact, we don’t have to look too far to find one key culprit: smartphone-first social media. I mean…if the timeline fits, right?
In 2012, the iPhone 5 launched with LTE support and thus connecting us all faster to on-the-go socials, attention-grabbing and shifting our navigation knowledge to reliance on google maps. Sure, we’d had smartphones for a while but until that inflexion point, they were still something of a luxury. In 2012 they became the norm.
Literacy and numeracy levels are in decline as the TikTok oracle trends up.
Meanwhile the accuracy of 2005’s Nathan Barley matures with every passing year. Coincimental.
Don’t get me wrong, the influences surrounding this decline in tested-intelligence is naturally much more complex than just ‘Social Media is Evil’ (hint: lack of investment in education, anti-intellectualism, library closures, unemployment rates, rising stress, inequality levels etc. to name a few) but while it might not have started the fire, I think we can all agree that the heady mix of social media and smartphones sure chucked on the gasoline.
Our relationship to information in general has drastically shifted from a finite selection of physical paper to an infinite universe of threads, shorts, voice notes and visuals. Even the inventor of the Infinite Scroll regrets it. How could we possibly retain information and pay attention to all of this? Of course we can’t think straight. Even on Substack, a place for reading, thinking, writing, it can feel like information overload.
Enter stage left: In comes AI usage and the possibility of a highway to the no-more-critical-thinking zone. To avoid the risk of derailing my own train of thoughts, let’s not dive into AI for now (but we should all read Anna Loverus’ piece on this: Is AI Making Me Dumb?)
Plot Twist! Ideas for Change
Beyond setting the scene, I’m not really interested in sowing outrage, pessimism and snark. I’m interested in Change. So literacy levels are circling the bowl, now what? What will it take for us to change the trajectory? Nobody is coming to save us.
We got ourselves here, we gotta get ourselves out of this place.
I’ll always feel a strong sense of personal responsibility, but declining rates of literacy is for sure a systemic issue. It is not something that can be painted as a DIY job. We’d file that under: Cruel Optimism. No, instead, let’s take a very Karl Dunn & Vivienne Westwood punk approach to shifting systemic issues: act as one. We each have a part to play and no matter how small or large our capacity for engaging in our local communities for collective action, we just have to do it. From the article:
Research finds that active, intentional use of digital technologies is often benign or even beneficial. Whereas the behaviours that have taken off in recent years have been shown to affect everything from our ability to process verbal information, to attention, working memory and self-regulation.
From the personal to the political, here are free ideas for change. Take them and run:
The Personal
Assume it’s phone-first social media. And our relationship to information scrolling. Take a ‘test and learn’ approach and trial a day here, a few hours there without scrolling apps and sites. Discover how you feel afterwards. Feeling more extreme? Delete the apps from your phone and stop supporting billionaires. Or take a baby steps approach and access social media channels exclusively from your desktop à la MSN messenger in ye olden dial-up times. Turn off your notifications. There are many approaches and there is no damascan moment that’ll reveal your answer. It’s trial and error all the way.
Read daily. Not only will it help on the literacy level, but it also builds empathy.Bonus. I wasn’t always an avid-reader: my Mum even had to financially bribe me to read as a kid (not exactly ethical nor in any parenting book, but hey it worked!) So you’re already reading, now what? Share your books, talk to friends, family and strangers about books. And if you’re in a pinch and not sure what to read next, read this: Very Opinionated for all your literary idea needs. Keep those little free telephone box libraries full and always gift your friends with books.
Connect. Don’t wait for brands to create their version of community, be the first to make the move. What kind of skillset do you have that others could benefit from? Maybe you can offer pro bono support to a local charity or startup or see if you can get involved in supporting your local library - even if it’s just once a month, that’s already more than zero. Having lived in a fair few cities now, public libraries are pretty sacred, let’s keep it that way.
The Cultural
Invest wisely. How does your brand spend its hard-earned profits? What kind of training schemes do you offer? If you’re talking about building community, then start local and instead of building a basic brand fanclub, connect with local businesses to partner on events, discussion groups, adult evening classes and anything in-between. The goal is to foster ongoing education in a way that feels light, accessible, human and fun. Help people to connect and share their skills.
Start a gang. It doesn’t have to be a book club. Although that works. Maybe you want to start a reading club at work or an after-hours writers evening or host a guest writer at your office, store, co-working space, local gallery/café/bar etc. Make it possible for other teams, brands or potential partners to join in and share ideas. The best way to learn is by teaching others. And for many, learning comes via discussion. For brands interested in following the lead of e.g. MiuMiu and Reformation, read Hi Holly’s Book Girl Era piece first.
Influence responsibly. Who are you working with and what do they do? I’ll always consider the eBay x Love Island partnership to be instrumental in shifting perceptions about secondhand fashion to a wider audience. That’s the kind of thinking needed here. What kind of partnerships does your brand or team work with? Who can you partner with or elevate to put literacy on the map in an accessible and inviting way?
The Political
Confirm the root causes (social media, tech, social infrastructure and otherwise), then:
Narrate the change. One of my biggest gripes with modern politics is the outdated approach to solid PR for positive social initiatives. On a planet where humans shared stories since day one, it’s no surprise that communications and the stories we tell each other continue to shape the world we live in. This story is an epic. Any and all changes need narration throughout the storyline. Plot twists, unexpected characters and all.
Regulate. Regulation is not a dirty word, although I understand why people might be cautious about excessive regulation what with modern history and all. Let’s look instead to examples like the EU Right to Repair, Plastic Bag fees and GDPR as best-practices in regulation for public benefit. It cannot be radical to see such a cliff-dropping decline in literacy levels and seek policies in pursuit of returning our ability to pay attention.
Educate. Without getting all Tony Blair Education. Education. Education. over here, it is unsuprisingly a pretty fundamental lever to improving literacy. And yet, it’s been consistently defunded over the past decade in the UK. This is easy for me to say from my sofa, but beyond the investment clearly needed we can also overhaul our opinions on teaching. I was raised with the silly quip ‘those who can’t do, teach and those who can’t teach, teach P.E.’ However, over in France with my in-laws and teaching is revered as a critical function of a society in pursuit of universal advancement. What would it take to change your mind?
I’m not saying we should all swap Love is Blind for Leo Tolstoy but instead, find a healthier balance between the two realms of information complexity and perception of both. Investing 100% of our interests, personalities and conversation topics into either end of the spectrum is bound to make us…weird.
Seeing such a data set can feel shocking and overwhelming, but change is a constant and we can always turn things around (see also: Ozone layer, Millennium bug). That’s not to say it can be reversed overnight, afterall, the decline itself was over the course of a decade. It will take some time and effort. But we also can’t sit back and wait for policies or schemes to come into effect. We can’t let literacy become a luxury.
As the eternal wisdom of Socrates goes: “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
Let’s build!