ABC News98%

Growing concerns of why people are reading less 97%

7/17/2026, 12:51:04 AM

Topics: Video
Keywords: Youtube

BS Summary: This video contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Negativity Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 43.4% saturation with 172 hits. Analysis detected 1,289 faulty-reasoning hits from 396 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 95.6% and a BS Rank of 97% (571 of 17,639 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 96.80% of the video peer group.

The end of reading is here, puts a spotlight on the growing concerns of how reading has changed throughout the years. 
So, let's examine these reading habits by the numbers. 
In 2022, fewer than half of all US adults have read a book of any type. 
That's compared to about 54% in 2012. 
Only 38% of people have read a novel or short story. 
When it comes to reading for pleasure, that number fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% of people in 2023. >> [music] >> The article also points out that books people are reading are simpler than before. 
Some books have sentences that are about 1/3 shorter than they were a century ago. 
When it comes to children's literacy, only 35% of high school seniors were proficient at reading comprehension. 
Adult literacy scores have also dropped. 
Nearly 30% of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multi-page text. 
That number was less than 20% [music] in 2017. 
Meanwhile, gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading with 57% of Americans placing bets last year. 
With more on this stark reporting is the author of The Atlantic's new cover story, The End of Reading is Here, staff writer at The Atlantic, Rose Horowitz. 
Rose, thank you for joining us here tonight. 
So, you write in the article that the decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. 
Even the demographics that traditionally read the most, retirees, women, and college graduates, have seen a collapse. 
So, what is behind this decline? 
>> So, you know, as you said, we see this broad decline in the share of Americans who read books. 
You know, the share of people who read books on any given day has declined by 40% over the past two decades. 
Um and what's behind this, you know, my reporting showed that it was really a kind of the rise of new technologies. 
You know, it started back when television first appeared and people spent a lot more time watching that, time that they might have previously spent reading. 
Um, and then as we saw, you know, smartphones, streaming, broadband internet, um, all these things that were, you know, kind of occupied even more time were were kind of more attractive and um, ways to to spend time. 
Confirmation Bias
29%
Anchoring Bias
5.3%
Availability Heuristic
13.1%
Representativeness Heuristic
7.1%
Hindsight Bias
0%
Overconfidence Bias
15.4%
Framing Effect
9.1%
Loss Aversion
0%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Optimism Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
27.5%
Negativity Bias
32.1%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Halo Effect
7.1%
Horn Effect
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Recency Bias
4%
Primacy Effect
7.1%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Straw Man
0%
Appeal to Authority
28.5%
False Dilemma
32.3%
Slippery Slope
9.8%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Hasty Generalization
18.2%
Red Herring
0%
Bandwagon
0%
Appeal to Emotion
5.6%
Begging the Question
1.5%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
43.4%
Tu Quoque
0%
Burden of Proof
0%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Composition/Division
4.8%
Anecdotal
0%
No True Scotsman
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
24.5%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Middle Ground
0%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Unattributed Quote
0%
Quote-first Misdirection
0%
Biased Writer Voice
0%
Indoctrination
0%
Politically Left Leaning Bias
0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias
0%
Attempt to Sell a Product or Service
0%

396 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.