The "End of Reading" Panic Is Missing the Real Problem

Head to https://squarespace.com/ladyofthelibrary to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code LADYOFTHELIBRARY Is reading really dying, or are we asking the wrong question? After a recent Atlantic article warned of "the end of reading," many people began wondering whether books are becoming obsolete. But when we look at history, the story is far more complicated. For most of human history, literacy was a privilege rather than the norm, and yet literature, ideas, and intellectual culture still endured. In this video, I explore whether we're truly facing a reading crisis or whether the greater danger lies elsewhere: growing anti-intellectualism, declining support for the humanities, and cultural narratives that encourage us to see reading, scholarship, and curiosity as unnecessary or elitist. GET MORE FROM ME: ✨ Support me on Patreon:   / cinzia   💌 Sign up for my newsletter: https://www.ladyofthelibrary.com/sign-up 🎥 Nerdy Self-Help Channel: @TheAnnotatedMind 🎙️The Annotated Mind Podcast: https://tinyurl.com/mr3k4w4m ➡️🎙️Listen to The Annotated Mind on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/2rxpjsdv 📩 Video Request form: https://forms.gle/zF6HjhJGZPR2hVx69 🌍 My website/blog: https://www.ladyofthelibrary.com SOCIALS: 📚 Bookish Insta:   / lady.of.the.library   🦋 BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cinzia-duboi... 🎓 PhD Insta:   / the.literary.academic   📱 TikTok:   / lady.of.the.library   📚 Goodreads:   / c-dubois   WHO AM I? Hey there, I’m Cinzia DuBois On this channel, I talk about dark and ancient history, literature and folklore. ❗️DISCLAIMER I'm very dyslexic, so I apologise for any mispronunciations that occur when I'm reading scripts for videos. Additionally, whilst flattered, I'm only a PhD student and not a professional educator. As such, I would advise against ever citing my videos or using them as an academic resource: please instead cite references for papers I list in the description box. 🔗 Sources and references below. Horowitch, Rose. 2026. “The End of Reading Is Here.” The Atlantic. theatlantic. July 8, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/.... “A Time of Hope and Worry: Unpacking the 2022 NEA Survey Results about Reading.” 2022. National Endowment for the Arts. 2022. https://www.arts.gov/impact/research/.... UCL. 2025. “Proportion of Americans Reading for Pleasure Fell by 40% over 20 Years.” UCL News. August 19, 2025. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/aug/p.... The Economist. 2025. “Is the Decline of Reading Making Politics Dumber?.” The Economist. September 4, 2025. https://www.economist.com/culture/202.... Evershed, Nick. 2025. “Have Men Really Stopped Reading? We Take a Deeper Dive into the Data.” The Guardian. The Guardian. August 16, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025.... Faverio, Michelle, and Andrew Perrin. 2022. “Three-in-Ten Americans Now Read E-Books.” Pew Research Center. January 6, 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-rea.... Grady, Constance. 2025. “Are Men’s Reading Habits Truly a National Crisis?.” Vox. January 3, 2025. https://www.vox.com/culture/392971/me.... ‌