This is not a feature of the american mind. People just don't like reading. People will not read anything! People are governed by laziness and habit, because t

This is not a feature of the american mind. People just don't like reading. People will not read anything! People are governed by laziness and habit, because they are effective strategies. Modern technology only makes it worse. Being a teenager makes it even worse, and living in the richest and most 'advanced' society in the world is probably the nail in the coffin. Lots has been written on how you can't get people to read simple instructions. That's why windows and it's cryptic dialog boxes and Yes/No questions caused so much consternation for all those years, until apple forced them to sort it out and start labelling the buttons with verbs. People might just read the headline and the verbs, but they sure won't parse the whole paragraph and decide whether they want to accept or decline the action as phrased. The same thing goes for politics and it's obsession with soundbytes.