Editorial: Phone bad, book good?

College brochures are typically filled with images of students lying in the grass, lounging in hammocks or sitting on the steps of academic buildings. More often than not, the students in these pictures have one thing in common: they’re reading. 

But in 2024, this may be more fantasy than reality. 

The 2020s have been called “The End of the English Major,” by the New Yorker, an era in which some students are arriving at elite institutions having never read a full book for a class.

This shift away from reading has fostered a culture of apathy, and social media has replaced the need for young people to engage deeply with the world around them. 

The endless scroll on apps like TikTok among 18 to 24 year olds provides an illusion of relaxation after a long day of school and work, but in reality, this overstimulates the brain and increases exhaustion.

Part of this exhaustion stems from TikTok’s role as an unregulated extension of the 24-hour news cycle. Further, viral videos are often designed to excite or provoke engagement rather than inform the viewer.

This is especially concerning given 14% of all U.S. adults now regularly get their news from TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center. The drop in media literacy is ultimately tied to a shift away from researching reputable news sources, which further fuels political polarization. 

Reading literature has been associated with increased empathy. In an era when inflammatory rhetoric and human rights rollbacks are becoming commonplace, the ability to understand different perspectives is more critical than ever. 

Despite declining reading habits, book sales actually rose 1% in 2024 after two years of steady decline. 

The driving force? Ironically, TikTok. 

Booktok is a niche community on TikTok that has propelled the sales of romance, thriller and fantasy novels by 20% since 2023.

While these genres provide entertainment and escapism, the downfall of literary fiction suggests a movement away from engaging with complex themes. 

We don’t want to dogpile on romance as a genre, as it’s something that, for many people, is a fun and easy escape after a long day of work or school. 

However, the widespread preference for books by Colleen Hoover or “A Court of Thorns and Roses” — to offer some popular examples — over literature that challenges readers to confront complex issues reflects a broader change in reading habits. 

The trend toward fluffier genre fiction that aims to only entertain is connected to a broader change in ideas about education. 

During the 2021-2022 academic year, Lehigh awarded just 15 bachelor’s degrees in English. Nationally, the percentage of English graduates plummeted from 7.6% of all degrees in 1971 to only 2.8% in 2021. 

In American culture, higher education was once seen as a path to a well-rounded intellectual foundation. Now, however, it’s primarily seen as a stepping stone to a lucrative future career. 

With soaring tuition costs, prioritizing career readiness is understandable. At the same time, though, this hyper-focus on productivity comes at a cost, as reading literature is often dismissed as unproductive and too time-consuming.

But these very qualities are what make great art meaningful. 

In the era of doomscrolling, books offer a nuanced and incomparable window into the human experience.

We live in a time when limitless information is at our fingertips, yet much of it is used to fuel outrage or market cryptocurrencies. The young adults who take the time to read are often the ones most attuned to perspectives beyond their own, something which can be lost in the algorithm-driven landscape of social media. 

While arts and humanities are dismissed as “useless” in favor of degrees in business, engineering or STEM, it’s these very fields that confront the essence of the human spirit. 

As Robin William’s character famously declared in 1989’s “Dead Poets Society,” “Medicine, business, law, engineering — these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for.”