Do you remember the summer of 2025 when performative males were around with their feminist literature, matcha, and tote bags in hand? At one point, we all must have thought that those performative males and the contests were corny, and we all had a good laugh. Even before performative males, there were also performative intellectuals who boast that they’ve read the entirety of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas in one sitting. Mind you, that book, depending on the edition, is over 1,200 pages long! Well, the concept was funny until we came to realize that in our digital age and society, we’re currently facing a literary crisis.
It’s not that people don’t know how to read anymore. It’s that people don’t pick up books and try to read them for their intellectual value. Reading books is the most helpful way to exercise your critical thinking and analytical skills. Such skills can’t be learned from mindlessly doomscrolling on Instagram reels for five hours a day.Â
I bet that if you went up to 10 people and asked them if they’ve read a book in its entirety for reasons other than for school, most would probably say “no” or that they haven’t read since middle school. Then, if you asked them what their screen time was, it’d be more than what they spend reading. According to Kumar, the average person spends 2 hours and 21 minutes on social media, and the average Gen Z individual spends 9 hours per day on screens (2026).Â
To be fair, it’s not anyone’s fault that they spend hours upon hours on social media or just on screens in general. Social media is designed to keep you hooked into a mindless doomscrolling trance. Obviously, there are also issues of self-discipline, but regardless, social media is extremely exploitative of the mind and its dopamine receptors. This is just how addiction works, and I’m optimistic that generally, people don’t actually feel as if doomscrolling really is productive and beneficial.Â
At least with the performative males, they promoted this image of intellectualism. Although I can’t guarantee that they’re actually taking in the lessons that are presented in the books they perform with, but they’re at least bringing these books into a mainstream discourse on literature as a whole. That is really all we need to plant the seeds that will hopefully bloom into a broader discourse on solving this literary crisis.Â
The biggest solution to this social media addiction crisis is, to no one’s surprise: reading! It also really doesn’t matter what you read. It could be a romance, young-adult, sci-fi, contemporary fiction — literally anything would boost brain activity and increase attention spans. So if there’s anything to take away from this article, it’s to go to your nearest bookstore or library and pick up something that interests you! Books are the most beautiful forms of human expression, and with collective effort, we can all fix our attention spans.