We live in a country where even grown adults can’t read past a headline. High school seniors are just the proof of what we already know. The Nation’s Report Card confirmed it again this year. Only about a third of 12th graders are proficient in reading. Math scores are worse.
Nearly half of seniors fall below basic, which means they freeze when asked to pull simple facts from a text. That’s not just a teenage problem. That’s a mirror held up to the rest of us.
Today’s @NAEP_NCES 12th grade math and reading and 8th grade science scores confirm a devastating trend: American students are testing at historic lows.
Nearly HALF of America’s high school seniors are testing at below basic levels in math and reading. The status quo is… pic.twitter.com/FMxGX5cu66
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) September 9, 2025
Skim Scroll React
Adults are not reading either. Skim, scroll, react. That is the national pastime. Share an article on Facebook without opening it. Quote-tweet a headline without bothering with the details. Pretend you are informed because you caught the “gist.” The kids see it, copy it, and now their brains are wired the same way. We didn’t just raise a generation that cannot read. We modeled it for them.
Schools made it worse by cutting out full books. Teachers now assign snippets instead of novels. A worksheet replaces a chapter. Students never build the stamina to work through a full story. You cannot develop reading muscles by lifting a sentence here and there. And while the schools deserve blame, the rest of society handed kids a shiny toy filled with endless 30-second distractions and called it “progress.”
This is not a pandemic hangover. The decline started long before anyone was locked down. COVID just accelerated what was already rotting away. We groomed our culture to value short bursts of dopamine over deep focus. Why wrestle with Shakespeare when you can swipe past a video of a guy lip-syncing? Why bother with Steinbeck when a meme feels easier? Adults do it too. We are raising kids in a house built on the foundation of distraction.
A snippet from Newsweek:
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement: “Today’s NAEP results confirm a devastating trend: American students are testing at historic lows across all of K-12. At a critical juncture when students are about to graduate and enter the workforce, military, or higher education, nearly half of America’s high school seniors are testing at below basic levels in math and reading. Despite spending billions annually on numerous K-12 programs, the achievement gap is widening, and more high school seniors are performing below the basic benchmark in math and reading than ever before.
She added: “The lesson is clear. Success isn’t about how much money we spend, but who controls the money and where that money is invested. That’s why President Trump and I are committed to returning control of education to the states so they can innovate and meet each school and students’ unique needs. If America is going to remain globally competitive, students must be able to read proficiently, think critically, and graduate equipped to solve complex problems. We owe it to them to do better.”
The Result is a Nation of Headline Readers
People who will sign contracts without understanding them. Workers who cannot follow multi-step instructions. Voters who scream about politics without ever reading beyond the bold print. If you think that sounds dramatic, look around. Every day you see adults arguing about articles they never opened. Leaders know this. They thrive on it. A distracted, semi-literate population is easy to manipulate.
We get little gestures like National Literacy Month, as if hanging a banner fixes the problem. What matters is teaching phonics again. What matters is giving kids and adults the discipline of finishing real books. Mississippi proved it can be done. They stopped lowering the bar, retrained teachers, and actually required reading competence. Scores went up. Imagine that. Do the work, get the results.
Sidenote: Notice in the video how these new conservative plans were put in place back in 2013, before our school system went crazy with pushing insane LGBTQ+ ideology.
Thanks TikTok
The literacy gap is not just a schoolhouse issue. It’s an economic drag and a civic weakness. Adults who can’t read well don’t advance in the workplace. They can’t follow the fine print on a loan. They struggle to engage in civic life. This is bigger than kids struggling with novels. It’s a full-blown national security risk. A self-governing republic cannot survive on memes and reels. The uncomfortable truth is that TikTok isn’t just a harmless distraction. It’s a Chinese-owned platform that has flooded American brains with short clips designed to kill focus. You don’t need a conspiracy board to see it. If you wanted to weaken a country from the inside out, you’d make sure its people couldn’t read or think past 30 seconds.
The solutions are not complicated. Put real books back into classrooms and homes. Stop pretending that short videos count as learning. Hold adults accountable for their own bad habits and stop normalizing headline skimming as if it were enough. We have to start rewarding focus again—before China finishes the job we’ve already started on ourselves.
Still Reading?
The Americanist take is simple. Reading matters because thinking matters. Adults and teens alike need to wake up to the fact that a distracted nation is a weak nation. If we want to save the republic from becoming one giant reaction video, we had better start doing the hard thing. Pick up a book. Read it all the way through. Teach your kids to do the same. Then maybe the next Nation’s Report Card won’t look like a national obituary.
And since this is a blog, let me say it plain: congratulations if you actually read all the way to the end. You’ve already outperformed half the seniors… and more than a few adults too.
Featured Image: Created with Canva Pro
The post America’s Reading Disaster: Welcome to the Headline Generation appeared first on An Americanist.
Leave a Reply