If the End of Reading Is Here, Then Why Am I Still Writing A Blog?

August 16, 2026

He’s reading Dysfunctional Literacy in his spare time.

NOTE-(The short version is at the end of this article/post)-

“The End of Reading Is Here” is a great title for a magazine like The Atlantic. I can see why a writer or editor would use a phrase like “the end of reading is here” for an article in an online magazine that needs attention and clicks in order to survive. Saying, “The end of reading is here,” sounds overdramatic. So is claiming that “the age of reading is over,” but being overdramatic is rewarded a lot in our culture. Being evenhanded and factual just isn’t enough.

The author of the article “The End of Reading Is Here” Rose Horowitch even admits that people today probably read more words than we/they ever have before, so in my opinion another title would have been more accurate. According to Horowitch, the issue isn’t that people are reading fewer words than ever. A lot of people are reading a lot of words on their phones, but they’re not reading words in books. So a more accurate title might have been “The End of Reading Books Is Here” or “The End of Books Is Here,” but maybe neither of those two titles is dramatic enough for The Atlantic. Yeah, everybody online uses clickbait titles to gather attention, even prestigious magazines like The Atlantic. Even I can get slightly hyperbolic, even though my occasional clickbait titles are meant to be satirical.

As much as I’d like to read The Atlantic article about this topic (I like checking out the source material), I won’t because The Atlantic has a high subscription charge (at least, it’s high for me), and I’m a cheapskate. Yeah, there are ways around the subscription that I could read the article, but I’m also lazy, and I’m also a little miffed that a reputable magazine like The Atlantic would resort to such a clickbait title for a potentially substantive article. Clickbait titles should be left to insignificant blogs like mine.

When she’s done ‘reading,’ is she going to review these books on TikTok?

Anyway, I watched a couple interviews with the author and I’m pretty sure that I understand the basics of her article. I think this interview is okay, even though I’d rather read about reading than watch a video about reading. At least we don’t have to pay a $99 subscription fee to watch it.

As far as books go, I know that I don’t pay for books as much as I used to because I primarily use libraries and used bookstores. Again, that’s the cheapskate in me. If anything, I read more books than I ever have, but I’m relatively old and I write a book/writing blog, so I’d better read (or at least start reading) a lot of books to have any credibility.

Maybe I’m behind the times. Over five years ago, I tried making YouTube videos to go along with the blog, and most of that was a disaster. I’m not the guy with the face or the voice or the mannerisms or the outrageous content or the charisma to make videos. I can write, though. I usually don’t even watch videos made by people my age because they talk about old people stuff, like retirement investing or how not to be lonely or how to steal the future from young people, but I’d rather read about stuff like that than watch a video.

Plus, I’m a reader. If I’m going to blog about anything, it’s going to be focused on reading and what I like or what I think about what’s going on with books or old stuff that I still like or something random just because even posts about books and writing can get old if you resort to those same topics too many times. If you scroll around on my blog (yeah, I know scrolling is bad for your brain, so I don’t recommend doing it that much, even here) you can find a decent variety of topics. And scrolling too much is nothing new. People were scrolling on their phones too much ten years ago. I even wrote about it in my blog post Print Is Not Dead.

Most of my friends have been book readers to some extent, from childhood until now. None of us were geniuses or anything like that. We were just curious and had imaginations and were good at one or two things but didn’t stand out in any one area to get noticed too much, but we could sit down and read silently for a somewhat sustained period of time.

The same people today who supposedly read more words than we did unfortunately can’t focus (or claim to be unable to focus) on reading a single book. It’s probably not just books. I’m sure concentrating on any one thing for a long time is probably difficult for them too. Reading the long paragraphs in my blog posts would probably be difficult for them.

Again, it’s probably due to scrolling. It’s easy to blame everything on scrolling now. I used to blame the Ivy League and teachers, but I think I’ll replace the teachers with scrolling now. I’ll probably always blame the Ivy League, though. Old Ivy Leaguers run a bunch of stuff and probably designed the system where so many people fry their brains with scrolling. I might blame Ivy Leaguers too much, but I’m pretty sure a lot of them know not to fry their brains on scrolling. Their dopamine hits come from obtaining money and power. I almost respect that. Almost.

Intellectuals during the Ancient times also spent a lot of time scrolling, but their scrolling might have been more productive than what goes on today.

If people can’t focus on books, they probably can’t focus on The Atlantic either. Even if non-readers could read an article in The Atlantic, they probably wouldn’t pay for the subscription to do it. And if they’re not reading The Atlantic, they’re probably not reading my blog either. But if people aren’t going to read my blog, then why would I write it?

Ha! My blog is free, and I don’t expect to get paid for it, and I cover topics in a way that The Atlantic would never think of. I know that some people out there, maybe only a few, are still willing to concentrate on blog posts, and I’d rather write for a small audience than no audience. If anything, Dysfunctional Literacy is for people who can read books like classic literature but choose not to: just check out the header of this blog or my About page. I’m almost willfully stubborn about maintaining this blog. With all the short form content out there, I feel like it’s my responsibility to write long, rambling blog posts with long paragraphs. I don’t want to submit to the short form culture, and I don’t want to contribute to it either.

Egads! That sounds kind of conspiratorial. I’d better bail out before I start blaming the Ivy League again. Nah! I’ll always like blaming the Ivy League!

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SHORT VERSION: I just like to write, and most of my YouTube videos sucked. Blogging might be the only social media that I can do.

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But enough about me! What do you think? Is this truly the end of reading books? Are media reporters exaggerating the effects of current societal changes? Should I put my SHORT VERSION at the beginning of the blog post instead of at the end? Prove that you can concentrate long enough to read a long, rambling blog post by leaving a comment below!

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Rose Horowich wrote an article for The Atlantic. That’s pretty cool. I wrote a romantic comedy from a man’s point of view. And a romantic comedy from a man’s perspective is waaaay different than that of a typical romantic comedy.

It’s the oldest story in the world, 1990s style!

Man meets woman; man falls in “luuuvvv” with woman; man gets blindsided by reality!