Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/09/04/is-the-decline-of-reading-making-politics-dumber

by pseudolus • 11 months ago

75 95 11 months ago

pseudolus• 11 months ago

I wonder if politics is a top line issue or a bottom line issue. Teenagers never seriously paid attention to politics when I was a kid, now everyone does. So are people really getting dumber or are dumber people getting into politics.

samt• 11 months ago

Por que no los dos? (why not both)

acdha• 11 months ago

We certainly did when I was a kid towards the end of the Cold War, but it was moderated by the major players serving broad audiences so they tended not to knowingly repeat falsehoods and the biases were more subtle such as selecting which stories got more coverage. It certainly wasn’t perfect but things like keeping advertisers happy tended to cut against putting conspiracy theorists and fabulists on prime time.

Talk radio and then cable news really ushered in the political entertainment era where what matters most is whether a story feels right for a narrow audience, and then the internet provided the amped up version. I wouldn’t say dumber as much as provocative but once the ad-tech engines started rewarding hot takes they became predominant.

jltsiren• 11 months ago

That goes in cycles. Some generations are more politically active than others, as young people tend to find their own things to do. The late 60s and most of the 70s were politically pretty active, as there were a lot of young people and the society was changing rapidly. 1968 was probably the year of peak youth activism, both in the Western and the Soviet blocks.

morkalork• 11 months ago

I wanted to say something about the youth vote back then and how they've changed since but it doesn't sound like they have at all. In 1972 Nixon won their votes and they're the boomers voting for the same dumb politics as today, reading and phones/internet be damned:

https://archive.ph/qW2iE

corimaith• 11 months ago

The latter. Because it's better to not know something and know that you don't, than to confidently misunderstand something. And Teenagers have alot of ego that admitting being wrong or misled can be hard for them, even internally.

arkis226• 11 months ago

well dumber people are getting into politics because gerrymandering is getting worse. the case where politicians choose their voters instead of the other way around leads to worse overall outcomes because the seats are "safe" from the other party and competition. without competition quality falls

zeroonetwothree• 11 months ago

Gerrymandering is only possible to such an extent now because everyone now has such strong partisan affiliation that their voting patterns are easily predictable. 95% of the population as soon as they see R or D by the name look no further. That’s also why we don’t have many centrist candidates anymore, they lost the ability to pull from the other side and they have a disadvantage within their own party.

themafia• 11 months ago

I think for B.S. to stand up in print it needs to be fairly well crafted.

I think the modern era has made throw away B.S. far more effective.

I don't think the total ratio of B.S. has actually changed all that much.

jdhendrickson• 11 months ago

If you are in the USA and don't believe the ratio of bullshit to reality has changed, I would like to know what news sources you are using.

makeitdouble2• 11 months ago

While I get the sentiment, the US led a 7 year invasion war in Iraq based on pure bullshit allegations.

It wasn't the same bullshit, and it might not have been so in your face in day to day life, but I'd argue it was just as bad.

FridayoLeary3• 11 months ago

the onion?

AnimalMuppet• 11 months ago

Don't think I agree. Think of it in economic terms of supply and demand. If something becomes cheaper to produce, you get more of it.

Or think of it in terms of Gresham's Law: Bad discourse drives out good.

But maybe... if the ratio stayed the same, but what got amplified/liked/upvoted got dumber, then the algorithms would guarantee that what we see got a higher ratio of junk. (But if that's true, then eventually the first two paragraphs will come into play, and the proportion will in fact change.)

jll29• 11 months ago

Maybe it is exactly because books are so cheap nowadays that nobody aspires to own them.

Maybe it is exactly because education is free [at least in part of Europe] that people do not value it anymore [there].

On reflection: no, it's the phones, folks. On a recent train ride, a young woman sitting diagonnally in front from me was frantically typing on her cellphone. It appeared from a distance she was cutting out some phrase, putting it into a frame and posting it to a social network. While this took just seconds, the task was itself interrupted by her checking chat messages from multiple contacts, each of which she replied in less than two seconds. This is something that I've had to watch in public spaces a lot: the compulsion to react on incomming messages - but then at the receiving end the dopamin kicks in until a reply to the response is sent and so on, ad infinitum. Timing-wise, there is little time to think deeply about what to write, the content becomes victim to short utterance ping-pong.

ethbr16• 11 months ago

Exhibit A for how US political discourse has become dumber: presidential debates.

2020: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1lY5jFNcQ

2004: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WYpP-T0IcyA

1988: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w2OIGH710aY

1960: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AYP8-oxq8ig (skipping over a few weird years there in 1972, 68, 64)

hx8• 11 months ago

Yes, both the reduction in the amount of reading and the reduction in the complexity of the average read text is leading towards a decline in cognition. Less than half of American adults have read a book in the last year, and younger people are reading less books[0].

The empirical evidence for cognitive benefits of reading books is so numerous and obvious that citing sources feels silly. Reading increases vocabulary, which are the building blocks that ideas are formed. This alone would be worth the time cost but reading also increases concentration, improves memory, and reduces cognitive decline.

Reading books is roughly the same level of benefit as exercise.

[0] https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-...

dundercoder2• 11 months ago

We don’t let our kids on to TikTok, but all their friends are on and it surprises me how much they take whatever advice is shown them as gospel. Lucky for me my kids will tell me “Hey, Johnny said the best way to get ripped is X” so I get the chance to teach proper research techniques (for the level they are at). Two of my four kids are avid readers, mostly fiction but some not, the other two I am really struggling to get them engaged.

After being forced to read books in high school over the summer (school mandated summer reading) I got turned off on reading for years until I picked up Harry Potter. That changed my perspective and I read gobs of books now. I actually prefer to read information mostly than to watch a video about it.

mkbkn• 11 months ago

How do one train their kids to read?

One idea I read somewhere (online) is to financially incentivize them once they get an understanding of cash/money. No clue if it would work or how effective it would be.

My kid is on the way and my spouse has zero interest in reading.

thevagrant• 11 months ago

Solution for my kids was buy or borrow whatever books they show interest in.

If they like reading comics, then get a stack of comics.

I allowed them to stay up later (if they want) but the condition is that time only can be used for reading. They really enjoyed that and it helped.

In time they traded the comics to fiction novels and their reading ability kept improving. They now get books from the library on their own and read quite a lot for their age. No parental pressure needed, they are addicted.

sotix• 11 months ago

High school also killed my love for reading. I really regret that I didn't start reading again outside of assigned works until I graduated college. Now I read a pretty significant amount, and it's a joy to me! Something about how school analyzed literature and required you to read what they dictated didn't align with me.

I just finished the Odyssey, a required book in high school, after I previously finished the Iliad, which wasn't required in high school. Reading those two together after reading Stephen Fry's Mythos and Heroes books was a wonderful experience that I felt could have been replicated in high school rather than the whirlwind of bouncing around to unrelated books like the Catcher in the Rye.

ryandrake• 11 months ago

Less than half of American adults have read a book in the last year, and younger people are reading less books[0].

-fewer books-

...sorry, I had to, since we're talking about literacy :)

maxerickson• 11 months ago

Reading increases vocabulary, which are the building blocks that ideas are formed.

Perfection.

ajdude• 11 months ago

I use Outlook to compose emails at work, and outlook's grammar system is constantly telling me to remove certain words from my sentences.

For example, I would send an email saying something like "there's actually another permission I need to grant you so you can see this, so I'm submitting the form real quick to take care of that."

Outlook will request that I change it to "there's another permission I need to grant you so you can see this, so I'm submitting a form to take care of that."

arkis226• 11 months ago

Mamdani was largely propelled by disillusionment of the young who then voted for him. They listen to the headline political message and they don't understand the underlying principles, his policies will not make them better off. But he'll try and fail, and then they'll just increasingly think the system is broken. If they read more they would understand that. It's the same thing that propelled Trump into office

dmbche3• 11 months ago

Humor me - concisely, what's so blatantly bad and failure prone about hos policies? Self evident enough that had the youngsters "read past the outline" they would have had to have got?

arkis226• 11 months ago

rent control just limits supply. city owned grocery stores is a huge capital and organization outlay just to save 2% margin with a huge opportunity cost. at least he backed down from defunding the police. the socialist democratic organization he belongs to hasnt though

CGMthrowaway• 11 months ago

Not OP, and I'm actually voting for him, but I think a lot of people are critical of the taxes that will be required to fund all his social programs, including:

Raising property taxes while freezing rents (meaning your shitty NYC apt will never be repaired again), $30 min wage and corporate tax increase and 0.1% tax of stock and options trades (driving jobs away)

FridayoLeary3• 11 months ago

Can you point me to any major socialist success stories? I was going to ask that rhetorically but i would actually be happy if you could educate me. Certainly running an entire country on socialism almost always ends really badly, but maybe that's not the same on a city level? Or maybe mamdani has discovered the perfect set of policies to make it work.

desert_rue• 11 months ago

There are a lot of people who voted for Trump who are older and now actively worse off. It’s not just the young who are disillusioned.

arkis226• 11 months ago

Great article in the economist today.

https://archive.is/sx6I2

which of the groups do you think read vs just swallow cable news?

yongjik• 11 months ago

Mamdani ran against Cuomo, a disgraced sex offender, and the incumbent Adams, whose corruption scandal was so bad that Trump pardoned him to sow chaos among the Democratic party. If I were a NYC resident I'd vote for a sack of potatoes over these two.

How someone gets "young people don't read" from this is beyond me.

arkis226• 11 months ago

the fact that the candidates are worse than sacks of potatoes is a separate fact from the enthusiasm that young people have for the socialist candidate. if it were normal they would do what young people normally do, which is to not vote.

diego_moita• 11 months ago

Yes:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

* https://ia800101.us.archive.org/27/items/Various_PDFs/NeilPo...

KittenInABox• 11 months ago

It isn't clear to me that one is causal to the other. It uses for example the top NYT bestseller books sentence complexity. But that might mean that the media ecosystem is intentionally pushing simpler books, as we know the bestseller list is very often gamed by moneyed interests and industry pushes.

dehrmann• 11 months ago

Every election, while I'm working on filling out my sample ballot, I visit the candidates' websites to see what they claim to stand for. Almost without exception, there's never any depth or nuance to their stances, and it's sprinkled with fearmongering dog whistles.

Politics is dumb because the electorate lacks a deeper understanding of policies and tradeoffs, so shallow, partisan takes win elections. The problem isn't that a Dickensian metaphor went over the heads of college literature students; it's that practically all the information most adults consume is intellectual junk food, and people aren't used to challenging their views or taking on different perspective.

Taek• 11 months ago

I would say it's a different problem.

The winner is pretty much always the candidate that gets the most eyeballs. A voting based political structure is fundamentally deeply biased towards visibility, and candidates that can get bigger reach with their message will get more votes independent of how low quality that message is.

That has caused all popular vote based politics around the entire planet to converge on simple, viral messaging, and inflammatory messaging tends to be more viral.

The other way to phrase it would be to say that popular vote systems hold politicians accountable to the number of eyeballs their antics reach, and we need to switch to a system that holds politicians accountable to the success of their policies.

Whoppertime2• 11 months ago

I'm not sure that Biden had more eyeballs in 2020 but this seems generally true

hamza_q_• 11 months ago

It's remarkable that Marshall McLuhan's ideas haven't entered the public conscience yet.

mapontosevenths2• 11 months ago

53% of American adults read below the sixth grade level. No idea that requires more than a sixth grade education will ever be mainstream again.

Huxley was right.

SoftTalker• 11 months ago

It’s been a long time, if ever, that people voted for ideas. They vote for party, as they always have, or for a charismatic candidate.

croon3• 11 months ago

While genuinely a sad statistic, should it still be called "sixth grade level" at that point if less than half of adults, much less 12 year olds actually reach it?

I mean it should because it should be a reasonable level to reach were it not for the dismantling of the educational system, but apparently it's not.

RajT88• 11 months ago

That book is brutally dense reading. It almost needs a translation for normal folks.

It is absolutely no wonder the ideas have not caught on more.

m-s-y• 11 months ago

No, it’s the paywalls. Can’t read what we can’t see.

senectus1• 11 months ago

thats a different problem.

Still a problem tho.

raincole4• 11 months ago

You know books cost money too, right?

If people are reading less now than they did in 1980, clearly it's not because of the paywalls. Reading is one of the few things that got cheaper and cheaper if you count inflation.

It's quite the opposite: we have way more free entertainment than before.

cosmicgadget• 11 months ago

This may be more symptom than disease. It's not like Dickens is a going to be more effective at teaching critical thinking or geopolitical awareness than a spoken lecture or debate.

It's just that in place of casual reading people choose brain rot, not because of the reading but because of the stimulation.

nomilk• 11 months ago

Many mainstream headlines are predicated on false assumptions. I read fewer books now days, but I read more overall, it's just off screens rather than paper.

I recently went on an analogue book binge, and discovered something I'd not previously noticed. Possibly for commercial reasons, books tend to frequently be much longer than they need to be, (coincidentally) they're often a minimum of 200-250 pages. Books that could easily have their content conveyed in 25 or 50 pages will be padded to 200. And not just literary trash (of which there's a lot) but books that are highly recommended reading.

Another big disadvantage of books is you receive exactly 1 perspective. Whereas if you actively research a domain with web access, you can cross reference and absorb a variety of contrasting (/conflicting) sources, and by smashing the ideas together enough, you can figure out which arguments are strongest.

I'd also argue the study mentioned in the article is unfair. Not understanding English from the early 1800's doesn't make you an idiot; a lot of the context and literally the words and language itself are very different to modern English. I can sometimes more easily understand written Greek, Spanish or French (I don't speak any of those languages) than old English.

raincole4• 11 months ago

Yeah. Take this very article for example. The title:

Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?

And the only parts where the author justified the title are:

At its simplest, Athenians in the fifth century BC could begin to practise “ostracism”—voting to banish people by writing their name on ostraka, scraps of pots—because, as William Harris, an academic, points out, they had achieved “a certain amount of literacy”.

And:

We also analysed almost 250 years of inaugural presidential addresses using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. George Washington’s scored 28.7, denoting postgraduate level, while Donald Trump’s came in at 9.4, the reading level of a high-schooler.

I don't know, man. I found this super unconvincing. Were Athenians reading more than modern citizens in developed countries? Is "ostracism" even a good way to run a country? Do we want presidential addresses to be harder to read? Especially when we're comparing to Washington, who came to power in an era when the general population didn't vote for president?

It's almost like the author is appealing to confirmation bias. Surely we intuitively think the decline of reading makes politics dumber. So the author doesn't even bother to support their claim. Just throw in some random examples off the top of their head and call it a day.

Our knee-jerk reaction is Tiktok = information junk food. But isn't this article, printed on The Economists, simply less-digestible junk food?

judahmeek2• 11 months ago

The results of the Flesch-Kincaid readability test seem like direct evidence that politics is getting dumber.

Do we want presidential addresses to be harder to read?

This is a very reductive question.

How would you address the dumbing down of politics?

Especially when we're comparing to Washington, who came to power in an era when the general population didn't vote for president?

Thanks for asking this as I was not aware of how low the national turnout was for early presidential elections.

That said, a comparison of the Flesh-Kincaid readability score over time[0] compared to a chart of national turnout over time[1] shows that the trend only gets more consistent once national turnout of eligible voters surpasses 50%.

0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/feb/12/st...

1: https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present

mek6800d2• 11 months ago

Not understanding English from the early 1800's ... I can sometimes more easily understand written Greek, Spanish or French (I don't speak any of those languages) than old English.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, written in the 1790s and published in 1813, is more difficult to read than 3 languages one doesn't speak?

Yes, a modern reader may not understand a word here and there. I myself did a double take when reading a Victorian mystery novel by T.W. Speight and the detective was discussing his cup of tea while discussing the case. I didn't throw up my hands and stop reading. I understood the general drift of the scene and continued on enjoying the rest of the novel. I later confirmed that "discuss" had an archaic meaning of consuming a food or beverage, but even if I hadn't, I still would have enjoyed the book. And "whiskers" in a Dickens' novel per the article is not exactly a show-stopper.

Padding is perhaps a problem in books (especially when it takes 100-200 pages to get into a novel!), but I see a worse problem online: everyone and their brother gaming the systems (LinkedIn, Substack, Medium, Quora, Reddit, etc.) by posting articles about technical topics about which they know very little and getting the content very, very wrong. Incorrect information which then gets disseminated to countless readers who accept it as the gospel truth and who, in turn, then disseminate it in one form or another to countless others.

The enormity of the flood of information on the internet also makes it difficult to distinguish multiple perspectives, let alone decide which perspectives are credible. The reader has to rely on -- just like with books -- experience and will eventually learn to reach out to respected sources and references.

croon3• 11 months ago

I recently went on an analogue book binge, and discovered something I'd not previously noticed. Possibly for commercial reasons, books tend to frequently be much longer than they need to be, (coincidentally) they're often a minimum of 200-250 pages. Books that could easily have their content conveyed in 25 or 50 pages will be padded to 200. And not just literary trash (of which there's a lot) but books that are highly recommended reading.

I might not be a huge fan of the verbosity of Ulysses or A Song of Ice and Fire for that matter, but I also don't believe that reading is or should be an exercise in data throughput optimization, whether in fiction or non-fiction.

In fiction you set a tone, paint a picture, fill out characters, motivations, parallell arcs, etc, not to mention just appreciating the flow of prose.

In non-fiction you can explain things from various perspectives, repeat things which is crucial to learning, as well as expand something beyond the topic itself, which can make it easier to retain it when you have something already familiar to anchor it to.

Another big disadvantage of books is you receive exactly 1 perspective. Whereas if you actively research a domain with web access, you can cross reference and absorb a variety of contrasting (/conflicting) sources, and by smashing the ideas together enough, you can figure out which arguments are strongest.

It's okay to read multiple books.

bell-cot2• 11 months ago

I'd also argue the study mentioned in the article is unfair. Not understanding English from the early 1800's doesn't make you an idiot... ...than old English.

Disagree. The subjects were "Students of literature at two American universities". They are supposed to be quite used to reading and explaining flowery, metaphorical, and older language. This is comparable to a supposed PHP programmer being flummoxed by a few hundred lines of messy PHP 5 code. Or an American History teacher who doesn't know Lee from Grant.

Pedantic Notes:

- For those unfamiliar, "Old English" is a specific thing. It fell out of use around 1150, and is seriously unreadable if you only know Modern English - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English#The_Lord's_Prayer Vs. "Modern English" was used from (roughly) 1650 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English Shakespeare wrote from 1585 to 1613, and is still quite understandable.

- "Bleak House" was written in the early 1850's.

EDIT: But I definitely agree with you about far too many books being stuffed with filler fluff. And that it's for commercial reasons - what market is there, these days, for 25 to 50 page works? Outside of recommendations for a very short list of people, I just don't buy books without spending a half hour skimming and reading them.

bell-cot2• 11 months ago

Admitting that a copy of Dickens' "Bleak House" rests its worthy spine but a few feet from my own humble desk. And that I find that weighty tome's opening paragraphs to be a classic Dickensian wall of words - which only some might appreciate to be a complex and subtle mosaic of myriad parts of Her Majesty's English*, brilliantly arrayed upon the page as brightly colored marbles might be affixed to the full expanse of a beloved garden wall. If, I will confess, rather longer and taller than the entirely practical need of such a wall, in and of itself, might be.

Such now said, and more to the point at hand - instead of the causality suggested by the article's title, I'd look for a common cause. When most of the population feels that their present circumstances have fallen far from their hopes of yesteryear, and their future prospects growing ever bleaker, then they neither spend time appreciating long and clever written works, nor gravitate toward wise and foresighted political positions.

Humans really ain't at their best when they're running angry, anxious, and scared.

*Mr. Dickens wrote almost entirely during the reign of Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India. And it definitely shows.

lordnacho• 11 months ago

It's marketization, the decline is a symptom.

People like the dons mentioned in the article used to resist dumbing down the curriculum. "Read the complicated text, or you don't get a degree. I don't care if you think it's harsh, and I don't care if none of you can do it."

Now, you want to be a popular don, don't you? Wouldn't want a negative review. What do the customers think? Oh, they're used to a diet of intellectual junk food. Not much point in serving them literary vegetables, then.

Politics is the same. There has been a complete breakdown of the feedback loop of proposing new legislation and then looking at the results. That sort of thing takes attention. But it's hard to do, you know? Just give me soundbites, so I can point my finger at my least favorite politician. This has rotted both the voters and the journalists.

If we're going to let everything be decided by money, the money needs to reward good behaviors.

southernplaces7• 11 months ago

For one thing, while not everyone reads novel-length tracts or deep introspective literature, today, a vastly greater number of people than ever in history are able to read, and daily do indeed read a considerable volume of words, ranging from the banal to the entertaining to the modestly intellectual and beyond. The evidence that this reading, even if much of it is short and very succinct, is somehow worsening cognitive performance than reading fewer things but of greater length, is shaky at best so far.

Secondly, having more people than ever be able to read is still better than having a small percentage of the population be literate and reading deeply, while a vast majority can read barely anything or nothing. Since all declines have to be measured against some baseline or relative to some historical level, I have a hard time believing that there is even a decline of reading or anything making politics much dumber given that at any previous time, it was the case that fewer people read.

If anything, the seemingly more intellectually robust political discourse preserved to now from history represents a minority of all (mostly blathering) political discourse, and even in the case of that limited quantity of reasoned discourse, was aimed more at a limited audience of watchers, while completely excluding most people.

Finally, having spent years reading about history and its political elements (and their typical discourse) from the time of Rome to the present, I see nothing to make me think it's been dumbed down. If anything, the political propaganda of earlier decades and centuries was absurdly stupid, pig-ignorant and hateful by modern standards, but worked better on its contemporary audiences, who had much less access to such a vast flood of information, than does modern political propaganda on modern audiences.

bethekidyouwant• 11 months ago

This is really dumb was politics smarter in the 50s? Give me a fucking break.

w0de0• 11 months ago

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, 1961 (in which he coined the term “military-industrial complex”): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiIYW_fBfY

lmm2• 11 months ago

Do longer sentences mean better ideas, or are they just circumlocutions and embellishments? I can certainly believe that today's readers demand shorter sentences and books that express their thesis clearly and simply. I would need more evidence to believe they're wrong to.

raincole4• 11 months ago

I honestly believe the problem of books of our time is that they're still too long. By at least a factor of 2.

Books are 200 pages long not because they have 200 pages of content to say, but because there is no business model for publishing physical books of 50 to 100 pages long.

We see the more is better mentality everywhere in marketing. On Udemy, instructors flaunt how many hours of videos their courses have. On Steam, we see "X levels, Y different enemies, Z characters" all the time. In OP article:

Open the Victorian bestseller “Modern Painters” by John Ruskin and you will find that its first sentence is 153 words long

As if this is a good thing.

xnx• 11 months ago

Strong cosign to this. You can't "monetize" a 70 page book. Unnecessarily long books are just as bad as 10 minute YouTube videos that could've been 90 seconds.

croon3• 11 months ago

My 7 year old told my 5 year old the other day that his teeth would fall out if he didn't brush his teeth twice daily.

She's also said that the king has no power because we have a parliament and a PM and elections.

You and I both know these are generally correct, but we also both know that they're not.

I generally, without shutting her down, interject with nuances and exceptions and minute details and 5 minutes later they have both stopped listening, which is fine.

Kids need clear simple truths and rules, even if there are exceptions. And as they get older, they can start learning the nuances and enjoy navigating the exceptions and maybe have ice cream late on a wednesday once in a blue moon, and their teeth wont fall out.

If adults never grow beyond a binary mindset and demand shorter ideas despite this meaning incomplete or wholly broken ideas, we have already lost.

It's no wonder selling simple solutions to complex problems is so successful in politics today, but you will never solve anything by lossily compressing complex reality into incomplete or wrong solutions.

TL;DR: <Won't Fix>

lmm2• 11 months ago

I agree that we need nuanced ideas and detailed explanations. I'm not yet convinced that longer sentences help with that.

Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?

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