For children who were raised with smartphones, by contrast, that foundation is missing. It is probably no coincidence that the iPhone itself, originally released in 2007, is approaching college age

For children who were raised with smartphones, by contrast, that foundation is missing. It is probably no coincidence that the iPhone itself, originally released in 2007, is approaching college age
oh my god I was literally talking about this with my friends yesterday.
The biggest difference I see between my younger classmates and the classmates that are older is that the youngest can't actually read. Like it goes beyond "the kids can't tease out nuanced complexities in the text." They will make up things not in the text, they don't understand the basic chronology of a linear narrative, they will change words for ones that start with the same letter and kind of make sense when reading out loud, they will answer a completely different question than the one asked in the assignments.
I was doubting whether I was being unfair and shaking my cane at these kids so they would get off my lawn, but it seems to be an actual trend.
on a post about declining literacy i almost just relinked the op article. 
but itβs absolutely a very concerning trend that began with punitive based systems like No Child Left Behind but was exacerbated by standardized testing in general and horribly flawed systems like reading recovery (which actually makes kids worse readers as they grow up)
about 15% of adults in america are functionally illiterate - they canβt read street signs. weβve known it was a growing issue even in the 00s and 10s but it seems like smartphones and the pandemic took and accelerated it considerably. even the way modern media is designed around 4000 word count max articles because the research shows that attention starts to wander after that. that number used to be around 10000 words.
suffice to say, this is not a βback in my dayβ situation but absolutely a crisis.
I read the APM story on the Reading Recovery strategies in 2019 and I could not believe teachers were literally teaching kids how to guess words instead of reading them
And it's absolutely what I'm seeing in my younger classmates. Reading out loud and skipping words, making up words that kind of make sense and start with the same letter as the one they skipped, etc.
Not to derail, but I'm glad it's not just me: articles are really getting shorter. Every time I finish an article lately I'm left feeling confused, like--where's the rest of it? I assumed for a while that nobody could afford to pay for long-form journalism anymore, but maybe it's more the case that fewer people can read it.
it also means less details which means more advertiser friendly and more articles published which means more eyes. i think those studies are used more to have an excuse to keep word count short.
This is scary, I know that their are kids who were functional literate leaving primary school, but three years into secondary and no longer literate - usually due to life, but the idea that school is failing kids in this way is awful...