I’ve got a bone to pick with “estimated reading times.” You know the ones I mean, those temporal cues that are increasingly popping up on magazine and newspaper websites indicating how long it will take to read a given piece. “3 min. read” or “7 min. read,” these markers inform us, accompanied by a small clock face icon.
They’re presented as an aid to readers, but, really, they are antithetical to the way reading works.
Why? Let’s start with the obvious reason, which is commodification. “The average person,” Akshat Biyani wrote last May on the marketing website Martech, “spends almost seven hours a day viewing internet-connected content.”
