It’s been a tough year for our brains. Merriam-Webster dictionary editors chose “slop” as 2025’s word of the year. New York Magazine recently dropped its “Stupid Issue”, with a cover story exploring America’s collective “cognitive decline”. There are big problems in the humanities: reading test scores are down for students nationwide, and undergraduates cannot read full books any more.
Even storytime – a comfy couch, a cardboard book, a kid’s rapt attention as their parent reads them a story – is an endangered activity. According to an April report from HarperCollins UK, parents have lost the love of reading to their children, with fewer than half of gen Z parents calling the activity “fun for me”. According to the survey of 1,596 parents of children aged zero to 13, almost one in three found reading “more a subject to learn” than an experience to enjoy. Only a third of kids aged five to 10 frequently read for fun, compared with over half in 2012.
