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.
One of my tasks at work is creating content - blogs, social media posts, internal communication emails, etc. We are instructed to write everything at a 5th-grade level because that’s where the average American reads. Not the lowest-level American, the average.
I also get to do customer support for people who would not have to contact me if they had actually read the information I wrote for them.
I’m a nurse and we were taught to educate patients at the fifth grade level as well. Believe it or not, the sex ed level is even lower! The average American seems to struggle with such topics as “it’s bad to touch or be touched when the person being touched doesn’t like it” and “don’t put random household objects in your butthole.”
johnconnor.gif: “We’re not gonna make it, are we? Humanity I mean.”
I don’t know if it’s at a 5th grade level, but the XKCD comic has an editor that flags words that are not in the top 500 most used words. The author used it in a few comics to explain complicated things in “plain English”.
I’d say that would be useful, but using it would be depressing so it sounds like a double-edged sword.
It’s only going to get worse. 20% of the US is illiterate. 50% can’t read above a 6th grade level.
Read that again.
1 in 2 people can not read above a 6th grade level.
That is a fucking insane statistic.
It’s only going to get worse. 20% of the US is illiterate. 50% can’t read above a 6th grade level.
I believe it.
When I watch TikTok, the video will explain everything extremely clearly, and the comments are FILLED with questions or criticism that were answered or done in the video.
My favourite is when I comment on a Canadian TikTok page about something, and someone else comments “ughhh it’s not illegal here and it’s $5” and I reply with “what province?” and they respond “Texas”. Like bitch, you’re on a CANADIAN page, with the person clearly talking about CANADA, and you’re talking about something unrelated in Texas telling me that I am wrong?
That is quite insane. You got sources?
Top hit on google: https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Top 10 U.S. Literacy Rate,literacy below sixth-grade level.
Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/
There’s a bunch of other studies out there that back that number…It’s always generally 20% can’t read at all…50% can’t do critical analysis of text.
It’s really ugly…Those people all vote, and I think it helps explain how the most vile ridiculous demons the R’s put out there get 30%+ of the vote. It’s extremely hard to refute lies when the person consuming and believing the lie can’t read.
Read more about it here. A reminder, if you can’t find the sample size then disregard the source.
That site is showing literacy improvement for 4th graders since 2003. It also says “21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate in 2022.” but then another graph showing “United States 86.0 %” in global ranking of literacy. It’s just a hodgepodge of stats being semi-sourced with little to no conext, it even includes Wikipedia as a source.
I’m not saying there’s no literacy problems in the US, I just don’t know what to make of that site specifically.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Cannot read English? Well that makes sense. The US is filled with immigrants and non English speaking citizens
I’ll take the average immigrant’s reading level over the average conservative’s reading level.
Sudden? No. Been dropping off since Reagan started the anti-education push his masters wanted? Yes. The illiteracy and lack of critical thinking skills have (intentionally) been instilled, or removed depending on your viewpoint, from the educational process worldwide. And as usual… the ‘wealthy’ “have a plan”.
Yes. For years now. And I am horrified.
I am a teacher and I’ve had students who could not find the article about lions from the animal encyclopedia I handed to them. And when I helped them to find it, one started crying, one tried to read it (stopped after a minute or so) and one asked “Isn’t there some lion video we could watch instead?”. It was two pages with a lot of pictures. But it was too much for these 5th graders.
Reading proper books has become almost impossible to kids because their attention span is almost non-existent with written material.
We’ve tried to add more emphasis on basic reading skills in the early grades for some time now, but it seems to have very little effect.
Is this actually due to attention span, or are these children basically illiterate?
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don’t know there’s anything wrong with it.
Jesus. That theory is the one my professors talked about in university, as an example of “how to never teach anyone anything”.
This isnt new. Anyone who has been on a dating site or app in the last 20-30 years will have stories to tell.
The same applies with ads for almost anything. I can recall advertising a property to let in the early 2000’s, the ad started with the line “Non-smokers wanted for non-smoking property” or something similar, and I repeated the non-smoking thing or variations of it over a dozen times within the ad. A couple turned up to look at it, both carrying cigarette packets, one actually smoking on arrival…
Actually, I’ve started to notice this in myself, rather than in others.
I am inclined to think that easy entertainment and a devaluation of the intellectual life (it is no longer admirable nor sufficiently valuable being an intellectual) can be a partial explanation. The first one leads to distractions and our time being occupied by mindless activities. The second keeps us there as people are indifferent to studying and asking questions. It has become a personal choice, a kind of hobby or trait of certain individuals, and not something that we all should be doing. And I’m not saying that everyone should be a Leonardo da Vinci excelling in philosophy, sciences, arts, etc.; but I do believe we should be thinking critically and informing ourselves to the extent possible, otherwise, our reading comprehension and many other things get affected.
I’m sorry if my grammar betrays my words, I am not a native speaker.
That said, I think these are some of our obstacles, but other times had had their own obstacles. I’m sure the average citizen from, I don’t know, Istanbul, London, Tokyo, some centuries ago was also very opinionated and ignorant of many things. It has been the constant, the rule, for millennia.
I’m sorry if my grammar betrays my words, I am not a native speaker.
Bro, you just outphrased the native speakers.
I do think you do be right with that.
On your latter point, I have taken to calling this “The Death of Expertise”. Not only has the state of being an intellectual been diminished to, at best, a hobby, but much of the population legitimately abhors it. This might be something of a narrow view based on my US nationality, but I have been attacked so many times for using “big words to pretend to be better than I am” that I struggle to see it any other way. I have north of a 100k-word vocabulary if you include jargon and other specialization-specific words.
But beyond that, and even worse, in my opinion, is the inherent and immediate distrust I see in experts. People who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of singular branches of knowledge or tasks are summarily dismissed for the very act that makes them the people to listen to. For a personal example, I have an MA in Visual Effects and a BS in Applied Mathematics, making me an expert in VFX and the computational and mathematics principles behind it, when the on-set shooting occurred a couple of years ago with Alec Baldwin, some guy on Facebook suggested in a friend’s post that all gunshots in movies should be CGI. I responded with my credentials and laid out not only that it was impossible, but also why in as lay terms as I could. He decided to argue with me that he was right and I should shut up, so I laid down a full mathematical analysis of the best-case scenario of implementing his change, with supporting evidence from industry standards groups, which showed that doing so would mean that every single VFX artist in the world would do nothing but put muzzle flashes on guns and it would leave about 3 man-months worth of time to finish every single other VFX shot for every other movie, TV-show, commercial, and music video. He still told me I was wrong. Toss on all of the 2020 right-wing nut jobs who emphatically believed Anthony Faucci was wrong and stupid when he is literally one of the world’s foremost experts I epidemiology and virology, and so many more examples… People just don’t know when to sit down and shut the fuck up because they are amongst their betters in some specific topic.
I’m afraid there’s nothing new about this, it has been going on for a long time. What I do believe is happening is now that every idiot with a cell phone can jump of sites like lemmy or reddit, we are simply seeing a lot more examples of the problem. Pretty much like when camcorders became affordable to the general public, we suddenly saw all kinds of police brutality videos and some people thought this must be a recent trend when in fact it had been occurring all along.
One of my last comments on Reddit was about this.
The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that people have stopped reading sentences. They’ll read all the words and then upvote based on the feeling those individual words give them. They won’t consider the meaning of all those words put together.
And yeah, “upvote does not mean agree” is something Reddit has always struggled with, but it has definitely had exponential growth lately.
It has made me start writing more clearly. There are comments I’ve written that have been wildly misinterpreted from my actual meaning. Part of that is that I tend towards sarcasm, and it doesn’t translate well over the internet no matter how absurd I get with it. But I’ve also started aiming to use more simple sentence structure.
It helps to use only happy nice words. A happy sentence is an objective sentence, free from judgements or pronouns.
“You watch that stupid thing too much.”
Starts with a pronoun, contains “stupid”, ends with a judgement. It’ll make people furious and it’s not the content for them but the trigger words they scan for.
“Maybe we could go outside instead of watching TV?”
Same reasoning behind why you said it, different responses sometimes.
I’ve had the same experience with people (intentionally or otherwise) misinterpreting what I said to mean something completely opposite. And I call them out on it every time, like seriously did you even READ what I said or did you just see a few words and insert your own beliefs into what you thought I was going to say? I’ve actually had some people admit that yes, they did indeed quickly skim without letting the actual words sink in.
It’s really a shame that you’re reducing your writing to the lowest common denominator. Sure there may be times when there’s a reason for that (Earth not flat, dummy), but the rest of the time it drags down the whole conversation to a level where it’s difficult to have a meaningful discussion. If someone is really trying to grasp a concept but they’re missing it then of course you need to drop out of the technical jargon to help them get up to speed, but the ones who are there just to ridicule and troll simply aren’t worth the effort to explain simple concepts to (such as your opinion on women’s reproductive rights is meaningless, the only opinion that matters is that of the woman who is affected by the issue). Keep up the high-quality discussions and ignore everyone who doesn’t make the effort to keep up!
IMO, many (most?) people quite simply don’t think about things. They just have some dogmatic positions they’ve taken for some reasons, and they regurgitate them as necessary.
And that’s a lot of the reason that they so often and so brazenly misinterpret things other people say. They’re not actually reading to comprehend - they’re reading just to get enough of a feel for it to classify it, so that they’ll have some (potentially quite wrong) idea of which bit of rhetoric to trot out in response to it.
You are not wrong. Reading what you typed, I can’t help but think about the people who have spent so much time defending their self-serving opinions that they can no longer have any reaction other than to start arguing. My ex had a bad case of bi-polar. She was really a great person, but any time someone disagreed with her (or even if she thought they were disagreeing) a switch would flip and she would rage at you until she thought she had won. Even walking away wasn’t enough because then she wanted an admission that she was right. Funny thing was that after that had passed and she calmed down, you could talk to her rationally and she could see your point, but it simply wasn’t worth the effort.
It’s really a shame that you’re reducing your writing to the lowest common denominator
yeah
At times I’ve been considering using spoiler mechanics to write a “simple English” reply, followed by the actual answer, hidden for only the more discerning reader to uncover.
There’s a difference between simplifying a message and writing at a lower reading comprehension level. I think a lot of accidental incomprehension might just be caused by the reader not being very good at reading English.
In my country (and I think the whole EU), government agencies have to write at a B1 level to make sure official publications and letters are accessible to all citizens. I think that’s a good rule of thumb for online conversations as well. (However, writing pleasant prose at B1 level is a whole different beast. Generally, they’re not very good at it.)
Good point on catering to those who speak other languages, I hadn’t considered that.
So what does a B1 level equate to? I’m assuming it’s lower than college level, probably lower that a high school level? Are we talking like middle school, grade school, or something else?
Sorry, didn’t get a notification.
Yeah, it’s basically at high school level, so most of the adult population should be able to understand it without much issue.
No worries, thanks for the update. Yeah that makes sense, we would hope that most people make it through high school, although the way they’re going in some parts of the US by gutting the education and white-washing history (they’re actually trying to teach kids that slavery was a GOOD thing!!!) I feel like in a few years a high school education here is going to be meaningless.
One of my favorite Redditisms was picking out incredibly obvious sarcasm with massive downvotes. Bonus points if replied to with a huge angry essay.
And due to the voting patterns, I learned to be suspicious of my own comments that were highly upvoted. I started to see it as a bad smell. My best work was the controversial stuff.
Remember when the internet used to be wall of texts. People used to write like writers do. Sentences and paragraphs that comprise a distinct idea. A collection of paragraphs that elucidate the point of view in their head… These days the style of writing online is some kind of line-by-line disjointed train of thoughts. Something resembling a collection of 140 character social media posts. I find it more difficult to grok. Impossible at times. It’s like people aren’t writing for readers. They’re brain dumping one liners off the top of their head.
deleted by creator
Don’t forget that we recently had a pandemic with a virus that is known to cause permanent brain damage. This includes reduced motor function, mental capacity and personality changes.
That’s okay. That just means the people who understand science and respect others by wearing masks will be on top in the future. Actually a pretty calming thought.
you really think that power comes from merit? intellectual merit?
I thought so too, then I noticed people driving more aggressively.
At work if I ask 2 questions in an email I’m guaranteed 1 or 0 answers.
That’s not just reading comprehension. People are always answering my questions with unapplicable answers.
“Is it on the left or the right?”
“It’s 67, the one with grass in the yard.”
Just answer the damn question rather than providing me other information you decide would be more helpful!
Yep. I’ve noticed this in maybe the last 3-4 years. I’ve actually wondered if i’ve started getting dyslexia.
I think realistically it’s more to do with the way I use the internet. I scan articles rather than read them unless it’s something i’m really interested in. Google search results, half of them tend to be bullshit so i’ve gotten good at scanning them at insane speed.
Yeah, I literally began typing this response before finishing your post.
…
It’s like with increased information we’ve learned to scan for relevance a lot better, but at the expense of overall comprehension.
Like it gets us by, and gets us through the excess in time.
But, when emotions fly? It’s getting volatile.
I certainly notice it as I post a lot across networks. I always have a title with my content explaining what’s what. There are so many times I have to reply to a commenter, saying “yes, that was what I mentioned in the post”. Clearly, way too many just dive in and comment on a title without even bothering to read the post content. It’s not that the content is pages long, it is usually maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs.
It’s no wonder so much misinformation takes hold, as few take the time to critically comprehend what they’re reading.
I think it is partly just fast scrolling and laziness to actually read the point being made. But then you may ask, why bother commenting at all then…
I agree with fast scrolling as the cause. All our social media these days emphasize endless new content to the point where it seems almost nobody reads the actual article anymore. I’ve seen posts on some of the politics subs on Lemmy where it’s obvious not a single commenter actually read beyond the headline because they’re totally missing some major point.
As to why they feel the need? I don’t think it goes beyond validation. People know the sort of one-line comment that will get them a handful of upvotes and agreeing replies, so they rush to be the one to make the joke first. It really becomes a drag after a while when what you’re looking for is actual discussion of the article. I find myself spending more time on Tildes than Lemmy because those sorts of low-effort replies are discouraged there.
And I forgot about those one-liner replies with something semi controversial, without any sort of backing. In the few places where I’ve managed my own community groups, I made it a rule that you can disagree, but then have to back it up with some reference. That made it super easy to get rid of trolls, and supported better debate as it forced people to fact-check a bit.
I have felt this way for a few years now. It doesn’t help that many of the family and friends closest to me are getting older. They definitely can’t read as well as they used to. I have to make sure to word my posts on Facebook and Instagram very carefully and with concise, efficient diction. Any sarcasm or meaning left implied just flies over their heads. It scares me regarding when I get to their age.
