If I write an article about the literary crisis in America, would anyone read it?
2023 University of Miami graduate and social media influencer Alix Earle’s career skyrocketed by posting “Get Ready with Me” TikToks in her college dorm. Later, she would be seen hosting a podcast, earning runner-up in Dancing with the Stars, launching a skincare line and amassing over 5.9 million followers on Instagram.
“What’s the last book you read?” Interview Magazine asked Earle as she dolled up in the green room.
“I’ve never read a book,” Earle responded, though quickly retracting her statement. “Like maybe, Dr. Suess?”
The question and answer thread quickly went viral after PopCrave posted screenshots of the exchange, leaving viewers not only judging Earle, but her fans as well.
“alix earle never reading a book and it changing nothing about her rise is the influencer economy summed up in one interview answer,” X, formally known as Twitter, user Ashwin Jacobs replied to PopCrave’s tweet.
Though many turned Earle’s statement into a moment for hate-posts and cyberbullying, others posed more complex questions.
“The question isn’t whether you can succeed without reading books. Obviously, you can. The better question is: What kind of thinker might you have become if you had?” wrote X user Mark Soroka.
Impact claims Earle’s confession is a “sign of a post-literate society,” and the statistics are there to prove it.
“In America, the share of people who read a book or even an article on any given day has declined by 40% in the past two decades.” The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch told NPR, “And currently, gambling is a more popular leisure activity than reading is.”
For senior University of Indianapolis psychology and sociology student Zoee Atkinson, this decline in reading does not come as a surprise. Atkinson attributes the literacy downfall to artificial intelligence.
“People are just having the opportunity to sort of stop learning and kind of have AI do everything for them,” said Atkinson, “We’re having people literally use AI to get degrees.”
Though Atkinson surveys the lack of reading at our own university, the same can be seen inside high schools where reading happens less and less. A 2024-25 survey with Stony Brook University analyzed 1,250 high school English teachers, showing an average of 2.81 books assigned to their classes to read each year. This is shocking when compared to a nationwide study in 2008-09, which surveyed 400 high school English teachers, who assigned an average of four books each year.
“[People] don’t have to read anymore, they don’t have to write anymore, they don’t have to do anything anymore,” said Atkinson.
Yet there is a difference between wanting to do something and having to. No one wants to read, and no one wants to write. There is beauty in the written word, in the way people can read the same sentence and evoke a different feeling. At a young age, literature teaches us about the world around us and how we should treat it with kindness. As we grow, it teaches us how to process our feelings and shows us we are not alone. The literary crisis does not only impact our intelligence, it impacts our empathy, our creativity and our joy.
