1y ago

Has anyone else noticed a sudden lack of reading comprehension skills?

Just as the title asks I've noticed a very sharp increase in people just straight up not comprehending what they're reading.

They'll read it and despite all the information being there, if it's even slightly out of line from the most straightforward sentence structure, they act like it's complete gibberish or indecipherable.

Has anyone else noticed this? Because honestly it's making me lose my fucking mind.

463 comments

What?
- Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  
  They don't think it be like it is, but it do.
  
  You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.
  
  Wow that genuinely was a struggle to read
  
  This comment is psychological warfare.
  
  Somebody get this man a doctor, I think he's had a stroke.
  
  Such as, the Iraq.
  
  Anyone read like comprehensive reading numbers of memory such as
- Fuck this is actually funny
  
  Tbh, that was my response lol
  I understand what you mean, but I haven't noticed people not comprehending basic information. Can you give examples?
- Good evening Ozzy !
  
  when hits you with the ozzy stare 😬

I'm afraid there's nothing new about this, it has been going on for a long time. What I do believe is happening is now that every idiot with a cell phone can jump of sites like lemmy or reddit, we are simply seeing a lot more examples of the problem. Pretty much like when camcorders became affordable to the general public, we suddenly saw all kinds of police brutality videos and some people thought this must be a recent trend when in fact it had been occurring all along.
- One of my last comments on Reddit was about this.
  The biggest difference I've noticed is that people have stopped reading sentences. They'll read all the words and then upvote based on the feeling those individual words give them. They won't consider the meaning of all those words put together.
  And yeah, "upvote does not mean agree" is something Reddit has always struggled with, but it has definitely had exponential growth lately.
  It has made me start writing more clearly. There are comments I've written that have been wildly misinterpreted from my actual meaning. Part of that is that I tend towards sarcasm, and it doesn't translate well over the internet no matter how absurd I get with it. But I've also started aiming to use more simple sentence structure.
  
  to use more simple sentence structure.
  to use simpler sentence structure.
  
  One of my favorite Redditisms was picking out incredibly obvious sarcasm with massive downvotes. Bonus points if replied to with a huge angry essay.
  And due to the voting patterns, I learned to be suspicious of my own comments that were highly upvoted. I started to see it as a bad smell. My best work was the controversial stuff.
  
  there's also the problem of people not reading it in the first place, and the problem of people intentionally misinterpreting what you say in bad faith. those aren't literacy issues
  
  I've had the same experience with people (intentionally or otherwise) misinterpreting what I said to mean something completely opposite. And I call them out on it every time, like seriously did you even READ what I said or did you just see a few words and insert your own beliefs into what you thought I was going to say? I've actually had some people admit that yes, they did indeed quickly skim without letting the actual words sink in.
  It's really a shame that you're reducing your writing to the lowest common denominator. Sure there may be times when there's a reason for that (Earth not flat, dummy), but the rest of the time it drags down the whole conversation to a level where it's difficult to have a meaningful discussion. If someone is really trying to grasp a concept but they're missing it then of course you need to drop out of the technical jargon to help them get up to speed, but the ones who are there just to ridicule and troll simply aren't worth the effort to explain simple concepts to (such as your opinion on women's reproductive rights is meaningless, the only opinion that matters is that of the woman who is affected by the issue). Keep up the high-quality discussions and ignore everyone who doesn't make the effort to keep up!
  
  I was a strong advocate for rediquette for a long time, but the site kept attracting new people who didn't give a shit about it. You can't fight the tides of change, I guess.
  
  Unmarked sarcasm via text is just always a bad idea. People don't realize how much body language, tone, and to an extent history with the person, goes into recognizing sarcasm IRL.
  When you remove all of that context... it's often just an extremely dumb statement, and I for one am just going to take you at your word, because too many people really do mean whatever it is you just said.
  It's also terrible because you get a comment like "I guess the earth really is flat" which maybe 99% of people take as sarcasm, and then the one flat earther or borderline flat earther comes along and goes "wow, lots of people are getting behind this movement!"
  
  Yeah, I feel the sarcasm thing. I used to use a lot more absurdist humor but over the past decade it's become increasingly pointless and even counterproductive as Poe's law moves along with the Overton window of stupidity. Stuff that used be recognized as obvious satire before gets taken much too seriously far too often now.
  
  You should use emojis to convey sarcasm 🙄
  
  It helps to use only happy nice words. A happy sentence is an objective sentence, free from judgements or pronouns.
  “You watch that stupid thing too much.”
  Starts with a pronoun, contains “stupid”, ends with a judgement. It’ll make people furious and it’s not the content for them but the trigger words they scan for.
  “Maybe we could go outside instead of watching TV?”
  Same reasoning behind why you said it, different responses sometimes.

I disagree. It's a very good game, but I think Donkey Kong is the best game ever.
- But does that make us morally superior?

At work if I ask 2 questions in an email I’m guaranteed 1 or 0 answers.
- My boss is horrible about this. He also doesn't organize his inbox in conversation view so he'll randomly pop up in different parts of an ongoing thread and can't keep track of what people are talking about.
  
  You should fire your boss. Sounds like they're not a great fit.
  
  OMG fr. I'll ask my boss, shall we do option 1,or option 2? and he'll write back, Yes.
- That's not just reading comprehension. People are always answering my questions with unapplicable answers.
  "Is it on the left or the right?"
  "It's 67, the one with grass in the yard."
  Just answer the damn question rather than providing me other information you decide would be more helpful!
  
  Ok so in defense of dumbasses, we don't always understand the question. Eg, whose left? In those cases we don't want to make your clarify the question and drag things out, so we give you what we hope is an unequivocally clear response. It comes from a deep-seeded fear of miscommunication resulting in too many mailboxes with their flags on the wrong side or whatever. We apologize for the pedantry, though. I get that it's annoying.
- Maybe because there's 10 kinds of email replies at your workplace
  
  Hah!

I think it has something to do with everything trying to get your attention, and waste your time for metrics.
We ignore signs because we don't want to read another popup.
We skim text because we don't want to know about your life story, just the chili recipe, thanks.
We skip or misread instructions because we've been doing the job for years, and we're halfway on autopilot.
We can't find a restaurant or shop right in front of us because we're starting to learn to ignore bright colors and flashing lights.
We browse the internet while watching a movie because we've seen the same cliche Marvel movie before.
The problem is that sometimes we get so used to these things that we also do it when we shouldn't be.

May I suggest that you don't get a job in IT?
- "I try to do a thing on my computer and I get an error message."
  "What does the message say?"
  "I don't know."
  The story of me helping people with computers.
  
  To be fair, that's learned helplessness.
  How many times have you said 'yes yes, just click through that, jeeze'?
  There is so damn much horrible shitty UX out there; 90% of the time users are just trained out of using common sense, and you can't blame them for it.
  That other 10% though, goddamn. I swear if you moved their doorknob an inch to the left they'd starve to death in their home.
  
  Also one my favourites:
  „Nothing works, and this annoying message keeps popping up. I keep closing it, but it just comes back every time. Can you help me?“
  
  More like my computer doesn't work. Error message at least implies the computer booted up.
  The process of trying to get someone to explain their problem is so painful.
  
  Even people on our fucking helpdesk write up tickets like that.
  "Caller can't log in"
  Okay what are they logging in too? What creds are they using? Are they getting an error message? what is it? WHY AM I HAVING TO FOLLOW UP WITH YOU TO ASK THESE QUESTIONS YOU STUPID FUCK.
  
  Well, I've had this happen before because the error is half a screen long with a bunch of random (to me) characters, only shows for half a second and it won't let me screenshot it and isn't always repeatable because it already showed me the error message, so why would it again?
  I hate when that shit happens.
  
  (Kent Brockman voice) JUST TAKE A SCREENSHOT, PEOPLE!!
  Aside from reading comprehension, it seems as though people absolutely lack the ability to problem solve. Head scratching is as far as many will go. I can't count how many times I've found inefficient, tedious, or straight up broken systems or out of date info in my office and when I ask people if they've ever contacted IT about it or tried to figure it out they just say "Eh, nah, I just leave it and it works itself out." No. My guy, you're just doing it wrong/taking an extra 15 minutes to do everything you're doing because of the workarounds.
  
  I feel called out 😅
- "I understand your issue, can you please provide me w, x, and y so I can proceed? Also did you try Z?"
  "Sure, I tried Z! Here is W"
  
  That's better than average tbh
- I feel this.
  What is the actual point of publishing knowledge bases and documentation if nobody reads them?
  
  Well some people read it. Just noz everyone.
- Preach
- Or customer service for that matter.

I help companies sell products on Amazon.
One sold protein powder. Product title says "25g of protein". First bullet point says "25g of protein per serving". Main image of the product clearly shows "25g protein" on the label. Second image makes it more clear with "25 Grams of Protein Per Serving" in big bold letters. The A+ content (images in product description) repeat this information in big bold letters as well. Both the image gallery and the A+ content showed a picture of the supplement facts panel. The top rated review for the product called out that they liked the 25g of protein per serving.
Customer messages me, "How much protein per serving? Doesn't say anywhere on the listing."
Rage. Instant, immediate, and intense rage.

Yep. I've noticed this in maybe the last 3-4 years. I've actually wondered if i've started getting dyslexia.
I think realistically it's more to do with the way I use the internet. I scan articles rather than read them unless it's something i'm really interested in. Google search results, half of them tend to be bullshit so i've gotten good at scanning them at insane speed.
- Yeah, I literally began typing this response before finishing your post.
  ...
  It's like with increased information we've learned to scan for relevance a lot better, but at the expense of overall comprehension.
  Like it gets us by, and gets us through the excess in time.
  But, when emotions fly? It's getting volatile.
  
  Massively! I used to read loads of books now I struggle to get through them at all.
  I find it easier to listen to a podcast and scan the internet barely taking any information in from either. I have to really concentrate to do either now. I am working at it. Treating reading articles/podcasts as more of a hobby where I try dedicate some time to it where that's my only focus.

Remember when the internet used to be wall of texts. People used to write like writers do. Sentences and paragraphs that comprise a distinct idea. A collection of paragraphs that elucidate the point of view in their head.. These days the style of writing online is some kind of line-by-line disjointed train of thoughts. Something resembling a collection of 140 character social media posts. I find it more difficult to grok. Impossible at times. It's like people aren't writing for readers. They're brain dumping one liners off the top of their head.

I recently got into a long, really dumb argument. I used the phrase "lesser of two evils" and what seemed like fifty people (actually two or three) seemed to think that meant I approved of, strenuously endorsed, and would defend the actions of the "lesser evil."
To me, this seemed like a basic misunderstanding of what the phrase meant, so I defined it. Their response to my definition was to say the same sort of thing they'd already said while claiming to totally know what "lesser of two evils" meant.
I lost my cool, and explained what the phrase meant again. One of the folks explained themselves calmly while the others seemed to think I was a congenital idiot because I kept repeating myself.
I don't want this to get any longer, so I'll just say that we were talking past each other. Nobody (well, except fr the one guy who stopped to explain what he meant) was really comprehending what the other person said. So everyone was a dumbass, basically. Story of my life, really.
At least, I think that's what happened. Watch the asshole who called me a liar and an idiot show up here to not explain how I'm a liar and an idiot again.
- I don't think it's a reading comprehension problem, it's some sort of cultural problem. These people are reading what we are typing, but that's not what they want to talk about. So they will take anything, even tangentially related and disprove a component of it so they can reframe the conversation back to what they wanted to argue about.
  I actually find myself doing similar things. Essentially I will write out a long winded comment, then realize that the person I am replying to has nothing to do with what I wanted to say. Instead I was paraphrasing all of the comments, coming up with a point I wanted to make and then ramming it round peg square hole style into someone else's comment tree. I have been deleting a lot of comments before even hitting the post button in the last 6 months or so since I realized I was doing it.
  TLDR: A lot of people online are not arguing in good faith.
- Lol, Lemmy is still small enough that I know the thread you are talking about. It was a political discussion, yeh?
  If I remember right most of the people who argued with you were from hexbear, which tracks lol.
  
  Yeah, that's the one. I figured I'm small potatoes so no one's gonna bother looking it up. It never even occurred to me that someone might have already seen it lol.
- Or a troll. There are trolls, even here.
- That sounds more like someone just rejecting all "lesser of two evils" scenarios rather than a reading comprehension problem.
  
  Yes, that was the gist of their point I think. The thinking being that choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil. My point was that if evil is going to win no matter what you do, isn't it better to pick which evil you're going to have to deal with?
- As an uninvolved party, after reading the thread, I understand that you feel frustrated and misunderstood. But I'm sorry to say that I feel like the failure of reading comprehension was on your part more than theirs.
  It seems like the majority of people who responded to you argued that there are not two evils, but two parts to the same whole evil.
  No one, that I saw, claimed you were saying that the Democrats were not evil. But the disagreement was that you see the Republicans and Democrats as two evils, while your opponents see them as one.
  Whether or not you agree, that seems like a logically coherent belief to hold.
  
  As an uninvolved party…
  Sigh. Not uninvolved anymore I guess.
  When one guy stopped calling me names and arguing against points I wasn't trying to make, I backed down and listened and then acknowledged that he had a point.
  I'm not rehashing the argument again. I'd appreciate it if you didn't go into my post history and throw things back in my face. I don't know what the etiquette is, but it seems rude.

I am a documentation writer at my day job. I spend an obscene amount of time writing and rewriting support materials for our software to make sure the instructions are as clean as possible. The end users of the software are busy doctors and nurses so I get why they dont have time to read and just want quick answers from our support team. I get that.
What I dont forgive is how many times the support team will complain to me that a scenario or a feature isnt in the documentation, despite me bolding, bullet listing, and highlighting THE EXACT THING THEY ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT. I usually relink it to them and screenshot the relevant section.
People. Do. Not. Read.

It's measurable.
In my country we have a central test for kids at various age, and reading comprehension is also measured. Every age group is doing worse and worse every time.
It's mind blowing to me, as a kis I didn't understand the point of the test, like you read an A4 page or two and answer questions about the text, that is literally in the text right there, it felt pointless. Well as it turns out it's not.
We are literally getting worse and worse understanding what we read. The future is scary.
- People have been speaking out a long time about the shit education system we use in most countries (of the West at least), and pretty much nothing has been done, it's still the same assembly line "education" that pumps out kids that are good at memorizing and solving problems without knowing what they are actually solving.
  Social media has also had a terrible effect for people's attention spans and analytical capabilities, and no meaningful restrictions have been put in place.
  People have stopped reading books and long/difficult content, because there are much easier alternatives nowadays that their brain naturally goes for due to instant gratification. Also because of having less time and energy to devote after working and being stressed out for the most of the day.
  The future is scary indeed, but it's important to note that we led ourselves here by constantly shoving our problems under the rug.
  
  To that last point - it's not like we were all collectively consulted and had these issues put to a vote, so to speak. Many of these choices were made without our input, and things were just placed in front of us.
- Lol I remember taking a state mandated reading comprehension test. The text was literally directions on how to assemble a grill.

I think part of the problem is that so many people nowadays are conditioned to consuming information in bite-sized chunks (eg. tweets), they now just focus on key words and assume they have all the context they need.
It's akin to the problem I see with technical support help desks, be it the IT support team at work, or my ISP or mobile provider.
They read a few words and parrot the nearest response from their knowledge base/AI bot, and call it a job well done.
I'm literally dealing with this at work right now. Three times on my ticket I've been told to undertake a series of steps, which I not only stated I'd done when I first opened the ticket, but I also attached screenshots proving it.
Fucking frustrating.
- That may also just be a resources issue. Too many tickets, not enough reps, and the expectation of low average handle time are not exactly conducive to encouraging those deeper dives.
  
  Yeah, I assume when support people do not understand what I am telling them that they cannot afford to understand what I am telling them. Either they need to solve my problem in 30 seconds with a stock response, or else they need to get rid of me as fast as possible so they can deliver more stock responses to other people.
- they now just focus on key words and assume they have all the context they need.
  In other words, any text around the keywords is supposed to just be a decoration. Because the purpose of a comment is to choose sides in their greens-vs-reds game, you are not supposed to convey any thoughts, what a thought even is again?..
- Had this happen to me taking a marketing course (bleh) the other day.
  "The word count is 2000 but I'm close to done with a lot less than that, do I need to have ~2000 words?"
  "Hi! You can go 10% over the word count. Thanks! :)"
  They also had a glaring issue in a quiz that, apparently, was never noticed by 500 people over the span of two years. Blows the mind.
- I've been running into this so much with paid customer support agents; it's been driving me mad.
  And the amount of times no matter what you say they just respond "have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling?" 🤬

Well, I mean it comes down to a matter of costs.. If you can't afford it, you really shouldn't buy it.
- Yeah I mean personally I prefer it on the left but completely
  
  Sometimes kids have to learn self-reliance though, you can't always do everything for them, as tempting as that might be.
- Mitochondria is the power house of the cell.

As a counterpoint, I'd like to mention that people often scream "reading incomprehension" when actually, what they wrote was ambiguous or unclear.
Not saying you do this, just that I see this far more often than I see people misreading anything.
- I used to work on an email helpdesk, and it was a real issue for me. So many people used to write "can" when they meant "can't". Working it out from context was iffy, because people also used to genuinely complain that the service made it possible for them to do things they weren't interested in.

Yes, I’ve been having trouble concentrating on reading, and understanding written text, ever since I started chemotherapy. They tell me the brain fog could last between four and ten years.
I’m also reading that some long COVID sufferers are having similar effects. I’ve managed to avoid COVID so far, hoping that I won’t get anything that makes the brain fog worse.
- I think he was asking if you notice this happening more in general interactions with others, not in yourself. Can't tell if this is a good example of what he's talking about.
  
  But why male models?

Yes. For years now. And I am horrified.
I am a teacher and I've had students who could not find the article about lions from the animal encyclopedia I handed to them. And when I helped them to find it, one started crying, one tried to read it (stopped after a minute or so) and one asked "Isn't there some lion video we could watch instead?". It was two pages with a lot of pictures. But it was too much for these 5th graders.
Reading proper books has become almost impossible to kids because their attention span is almost non-existent with written material.
We've tried to add more emphasis on basic reading skills in the early grades for some time now, but it seems to have very little effect.

Prior covid infection has a well documented negative impact on the brain. I.e brain fog. Fundamentally covid causes vascular damage (blood vessels are harmed) and the brain is highly dependant on blood vessel health.
- I've been really mellow since I caught covid and I like it. I'm finally happy. It's like when Homer put the crayon back in his brain because he realised that being smart made him miserable.
  
  I wound up the same after picking up a weed habit as an adult - very mild persistent brain fog, and my memory has been affected, but I'm happier, and my wife is happier as a consequence. It's not ideal, but I value happiness over peak mental performance.
  
  That is crazy to hear. I always cherished the few days of recovery after I get the flu due to it stopping my head spinning with thoughts constantly.
- Source?
- Can I see the documentation? Couldn't find it and am curious :)
  
  Pro tip: google “COVID brain fog”
- Some of it’s the food too. Folks be hoofing gluten and corn syrup all day long. I saw a homeless guy in the park just sitting there eating a block of pudding mix.

I disagree, I think Alaska is fairly erogenous
- OP, here's another one! This one's also pointing out incorrect facts about Arkansas!
  
  that's Austria not Australia

Absolutely. At work I realized that if I have paragraphs in emails most people will just read the first sentence and ignore the rest. I have resorted to breaking paragraphs in to very easy to follow bulleted lists and that seems to help a little bit.
I think the most common reason for this is that it forces people to go out of their routine/comfort zone to understand something, which many people aren't willing to do, either consciously or subconsciously.

You're on Internet. Many people are not native English speaker.
Secondly, people are saying this kind of shit litteraly since anciant Greece. You're late to the party. They complained about it in each and every place of the western world at every time we have written records to read that shit. It's seriously amazing how this trope is one of the most consistent of the history of mankind. And it doesn't depend on the language obviously.

One of my tasks at work is creating content - blogs, social media posts, internal communication emails, etc. We are instructed to write everything at a 5th-grade level because that's where the average American reads. Not the lowest-level American, the average.
I also get to do customer support for people who would not have to contact me if they had actually read the information I wrote for them.

I think COVID did a lot of brain damage. People are acting crazier and more reckless in the last few years and I can't think of any other reason for it.
- Some of the earliest studies I read about COVID was how it can enter the brain like meningitis and effect a person's cognitive functions. This was a while back and I can't vouch for the accuracy of the information, but seeing how much people have seemed to have lost their minds over the last few years makes me think back to that study.
  I can't say I've been immune to it either. I have never been "symptomatic", but the last 3 years have definitely felt more hazy than the times before, and have made me question my own sanity.
  
  thankfully I'd been vaccinated by the time I got symptomatic covid for the first time and I don't think I had any cognitive effects.
- Yeah, it's wild how much denial we're in about this as a society. Neurological damage was widespread. I personally contracted Covid twice (that I know about) and had noticable difficulty with memory and keeping my train of thought. Something that I never had problems with previously. I think for a lot of people, the difference might not be that noticeable, and therefor is being ignored. I was a hypervigilant stress knot all my life. So now I just have even more anxiety because I can't remember the entire grocery list in my head anymore.
- Staying inside for months to years and watching your society fail at things that are actually important to you is also bad for one's mental health. You don't have to actually get Covid for Covid to get you.

English not the first language for about 7.5 billion people on this planet.
More people with English as a second or even third language have a higher reading and comprehension level than the average USAian
Many people simply do not know how to write correctly, which only exacerbates the problem
The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level.
https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/08/whats-the-latest-u-s-literacy-rate/
- 54% of US adults only have a sixth grade competency level in reading. 21% of US adults are functionally illiterate.
- Talking about the 3rd option I think that's the opposite problem actually. People adhere to the formal rules of the English language so strongly that a slightly incorrect sentence becomes incomprehensible to them.
  Me can create word lines by using wrong words.
  That sentence should not be hard to understand if you're actually fluent in English. Yet I see more and more people being completely lost and confused like they never even tried to understand in the first place.
  Kinda like a spelling error in their there and they're. Contextually you should understand which one they meant regardless of mistakes.
  
  There is no way they're being too formal with their writing.

Sudden? No. It's always been very, very bad.

I've only noticed a trend of people not being able to answer more than one question at a time, even when chatting and they have all week to answer. The first question is somehow always skipped.
This is making me mad, as I feel forced to pause my thoughts. Pause the ideas in my head. Wait for the reply, reply myself, wait for the conversation to turn a bit and finally be able to ask the second question. Now if I have three questions, I might as well give up and talk to a chatbot.
People have the attention span of a peanut by now.
- Oh boy. Absolutely.
  Even if I bullet point or number my questions, only about half of them gets answered. Like...what is your fucking problem?
  
  Have you tried explicitly asking the person to reply to all points and use a similar format eg
  Please respond in kind like so.
  Answer to question one
  Answer to question two
  Answer to question three
  It's important to answer all questions. Partial responses waste both of our time.
  You can also send out forms that literally wont validate unless completely filled out.
- In a professional setting, this drives me nuts. If I ask three questions, I need the answer to all three questions before I can do the thing you want me to do.
  Online? Meh, normally there's a specific part of someone's comment that I'm interested in and that's what I engage with. If they want to talk about more, or talk about something else, I generally don't care and will discontinue engaging.
- Yeah I don't get this either, it's been like this for at least a few years.
  Ha, come to think of it, I remember a teacher complaining about it on tests back in 2007. "Slow down and answer the entire question"

Not only reading comprehension but also media literacy and scientific literacy. Too many people misunderstand simple messages in media. Homelander from The Boys come in mind.

My new job has 18 people in a training class where we are asked to read the content out loud. The amount of grown ass adults that will literally make up different words blows my mind.

Sudden? That’s been declining for years my dude.
I’m lucky if people understand the first bullet point in my emails. I’m luckier still if they keep reading, never mind understand my next point.
- Same. I could have the point highlighted, bold, all caps and underlined, and still get a reply all asking about it.

I don't understand, what are you trying to say? :(
- Well I'm glad you got it, because I'm lost.

All the damn time. Especially with work correspondence. For instance I'll say I'm free for X anytime but Y, and they'll write back, "Y works perfectly.".
Shit gets me heated.
- Lol. That one makes me strip a gear.

Sudden? No, not really. People have sucked at reading comprehension as far back as I can remember (which is some decades).

It's only going to get worse. 20% of the US is illiterate. 50% can't read above a 6th grade level.
Read that again.
1 in 2 people can not read above a 6th grade level.
That is a fucking insane statistic.

I'll generalize and say there are many my age in their 20s that watch things like TikTok and shorts that are conditioned for the fastest intake of media. This means ignoring the written word outside of texts.
Even myself, if I see a wall of text in an article, I know to skip the fluffer ad-reads down to paragraph three, then skim. To be fair most articles could be wrapped up to maybe two paragraphs but get extended for ad spots. Outside the context of reading articles on say lemmy, especially online, there is a largely missed hear mean not what I'm saying operating in good faith that often gets missed online. For example if someone posts an article about how smoking kills you, and I post a comment that "yes but its a creature comfort" I am not refuting it kills you - I'm merely suggesting that its a rough world and that people have vices to cope.
Nuance and assumption that we're acknowledging it is often lost on people.
- What’s interesting is that articles are longer to keep you on the page for ad revenue. Videos are shorter to feed you a lot of different content quickly to keep you around for ad revenue.
  Really, we’re all being programmed by advertising strategies and that’s why we’re fucked.
- Tldr?

What do you mean "sudden?" It's been the bane of my existence since first logging into the Internet and discovering chat rooms in the early 90's, communicating solely by text.
- The only trouble is figuring out who just doesn't understand and who is reading what they want it to say instead.
- Yeah, I'd actually bet it's skyrocketed in the last bit, because everyone's reading all the time on the internet. Have you ever read something a typical, non-academic old person wrote?

Idiocracy is slowly becoming a documentary, and I hate it.

Sudden? No. Been dropping off since Reagan started the anti-education push his masters wanted? Yes. The illiteracy and lack of critical thinking skills have (intentionally) been instilled, or removed depending on your viewpoint, from the educational process worldwide. And as usual... the 'wealthy' "have a plan".

Yeah... But not just reading. If found that I have to explain extremely basic story plots or what happened in a movie to people. Like they never watched anything that happened in it.

I always hated that about redditers. They love to pretend they don’t understand people and then feel like they get bonus points if they can intentionally misconstrue your statements to be offensive or wrong.
- I'm seeing that a lot here too, mostly from politically aggressive folks

I don't know man, but I'll tell you this- I went to the UK to see a punk show and it got cancelled, so I went on the band's IG to see if there was a post as to why. There was, and as I tried to read some of the comments from users on the post my mind actually melted from how fucked up the spelling was. Not abbreviations, but just a shocking inability to spell very basic words. It's concerning
- I think a lot of people used to pick up vocabulary and spelling from reading, if it wasn't books there were still news articles - they likely read something somewhere every day.
  Nowadays they pick it up from social media, so they say things like mortified instead of horrified and weary instead of wary, and spell like shit.
  
  Drives me insane. They think chic is pronounced chick. They think Ms. is short for Miss. And already is not a word.
- sometimes I can't be bothered to fix spelling mistakes, especially if I'm on the go or the person I'm in an internet argument with isn't worth the effort, and I don't know why I'm bothering in the first place

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This IS NOT new, and IS NOT a sign of bad things.
100 years ago, conservatives could barely even read.
The only thing that has been on sharp incline lately is logical fallacies coming out of them. They're literally regressing, though they've always been hyper-judgemental idiots who are fundamentally afraid of reality.

During my grade six year (1992) I noticed when we would take turns reading pages from our english class novel that nearly every person was unable to comprehend, pronounce and read clearly.
I would finish the books in a day and have to go slowly through it with the class for the next two weeks watching people that were obviously barely literate reading the same books.
- This was my experience in school too. I had no issues with reading and had to watch all my classmates in every grade fucking struggle like hell.
  the worst was reading outloud and now I have panic attacks and I remember my first panic attack so clearly. I was asked to read out loud in class, and I did so well at reading outloud that the next time someone else was asked, someone wanted me to read instead and then teacher was of course like no, we all need to learn how to read outloud - so when it was my turn to read out loud again, I fucking flipped out. Couldn't breath normally, started panicking and crying and screaming.
  And now I hate reading out loud. And I have gone through lots of therapy and no one has ever been able to help with my panic attacks. Well, outside of "here take these pills that have tons of side effects that will also ruin your life"
  
  Do you know if the trigger is pressure, stress, too much unwanted attention, etc?

Also, people jumping to extreme or nonsensical conclusions. Something like: "I personally don't like a cactus as a balcony plant." - "Aha so you think all plants should die?! I think you should die instead!"
Sometimes they will just make up stuff you supposedly believe and go ballistic on that. For some there really is no nuance and it's really tiering how this compromises more complex discussions.
- Sometimes they will just make up stuff you supposedly believe and go ballistic on that
  At that point, you just call strawman and leave; no point in engaging with someone arguing with themself
- Yeah nuance is an endangered concept... It's tragic.
  Part of that probably is the education system; "Here's a multiple choice answer where several are relevant, choose 'the best' answer"
- On the same note, people whose arguments are completely black and white, not wanting to see even the slightest nuance.
  I think that is by far what annoys me the most.
  
  So you can't hold yourself to a decision? Typical flip flopping nonprincipled [insert your political affiliation here]!

In general, or on Lemmy specifically? Because I've definitely noticed that some comment replies on Lemmy seem to completely miss the point of the parent comment.
- for me I notice way more typos here than I ever saw on Reddit which I find odd. Both sites allow you to edit your comments..
- From my experience, that was way worse on Reddit. But I haven't been here long, so idk

Yes it's just one of the many signposts on the road to Idiocracy
- Can we start making fun of people who invoke Idiocracy the way we do people who invoke 1984?
  
  I don't see why you would, as they are both highly relevant to the shit sandwich our world has become with dumbasses breeding more dumbasses everywhere, and authoritarian surveillance systems watching us everywhere.
- The biggest thing no one notices in Idiocracy is that they were still smart enough to find the smartest man alive to fix the problem.

Reading compre-what now?

For me it's scanning vs. reading. Too often I'll think I've read something, react to it, only to see after the fact that I missed something because I was in fact -not- reading but scanning. Email is an example. I get so much of it, I scan and skim, and inevitably get bit by this bad habit, often more than once a day. It's a disservice to the person e-mailing me, I know, but there are a LOT of people and I suppose the (poor) rationale is that at least everyone is getting some attention. I know it's better to get to what I can and things that I can't just need to wait.

I've been a cashier for ages and a question that often pops up for customers on the payment terminal is "would you like to donate to X charity". How often people ask me what they should press, yes or no... I look at them ask them if they would like to donate to X charity and it's like a light goes on for them and they suddenly understand.
- Would you like to help this retailer pad it's donations to have a smaller tax bill
- Would you like to donate to some charity that will end up wasting the money and we can pad our donation limit to be taxed less
  
  lol exactly

So many people just make up what they want to out of anything you say.

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