3 ms·

My parents are teachers and talk about mass consumption of internet media as the largest negative effect of the pandemic on children. Many of them are serious a

• corrral 4y ago
  Anecdotal, but my friends who are teachers report a marked decline in student reading ability (vs. even just 20 years ago) in middle and higher grades. The main problem seems to be that kids have trouble parsing sentences that aren't very simple and short, with the result that most of the students—including "advanced" students in accelerated classes—have trouble following the basic narrative, let alone anything deeper, of works that weren't regarded as difficult when they were written. I don't mean Shakespeare or Paradise Lost or something, but works aimed at younger readers from as recently as the late 20th century. They lose track of what's going on by the end of a sentence having more than a small number of clauses. This trend pre-dates the lockdowns. Web-induced changes in reading behavior is my #1 suspect for the culprit, though I'm also suspicious of the YA book genre—I have an unconfirmed hunch that, as it's risen to prominence, it's also chased more and more "palatable", if you will, writing styles, in the name of greater sales.