Performance Anxiety

I was recently talking to a couple teenagers about their reading habits (or lack thereof) when one of them explained: “Usually when you see someone our age reading for pleasure, they’re just being performative.” Reading seems like it requires a lot of work to virtue signal — compared to wearing a T-shirt with a catchy slogan, affixing a sticker to your bumper, or just having the NextDraft app on your iPhone homescreen. But it got me wondering about the current stats related to American reading habits. The latest research is not promising. “Leisure reading among U.S. adults 15 and older has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years.” WaPo (Gift Article): Why so few Americans read for pleasure. This article won’t impact the trend, since browsing its findings definitely doesn’t qualify as reading for pleasure.

+ Not all of today’s printed media news is bad. The Onion Brought Back Its Print Edition. The Gamble Is Paying Off. According Chief Executive Ben Collins: “People like getting something in the mail that’s not f—ing awful.”