[alhadrad]

This is the start of modern illiteracy.

[ryao]

Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be the start of modern illiteracy.

By the way, for what it is worth, only 2% of the population can read at a college level. It had been that way for so long that I heard that the category was merged into the high school level several years ago to make the literacy rate in the top bracket 4% instead of the prior 2%. i.e. “modern illiteracy” started a long time ago if we go by numbers.

[dasil003]

Maybe Socrates was correct? I certainly think Google has damaged my memory, or maybe just age, hard to say.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.

[anonzzzies]

Start... We are already very far advanced as far as I can see. You wouldn't know if you hang with university students; they seem, at least the ones I employ/talk to, far more knowledgeable than the young me was, however, when I talk to other young people, they don't want to and are not very good at processing textual information. They need to have it spoken and in a very information sparse format. It's somewhat depressing, so I hope it's just the people I meet and what I read online, but I don't think so.

[slumberlust]

Name a generation that didn't think the youth 'lost it.'

[schmidtleonard]

This is adblock for text.

[senectus1]

I mean.. yeah, but.. I just fed this into grok and it did a fair job of summarising it (I know because I've done a fair bit of reading on the zizian nutters.)

[balamatom]

No, just a way to say "tl;dr" which also somehow manages to be offensively classist.