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

ThatWeirdGuy1001@sh.itjust.works to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 723 points –

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.

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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.

Yes unfortunately, what I mean by 'we' is of course the ruling classes and the rich who don't give a flying fuck if they're the only ones left on the planet. Sadly for them they will soon realize that they need other people too in order to survive but it will be already too late then.

Lol I remember taking a state mandated reading comprehension test. The text was literally directions on how to assemble a grill.