Is the Age of Reading Over?

People may be reading now more than ever (emails, texts, social-media posts). But fewer and fewer people are reading actual books. The Atlantic’s staff writer Rose Horowitch, who wrote the August cover story, “The End of Reading Is Here (theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisi…),” explains what might be lost in a “postliterate” age—and it’s a lot more than books.

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