Speaker 1: I just read a headline that said gen Z are
Speaker 1: arriving to college unable to even read a sentence, even
Speaker 1: read a sentence, Like, that's sensational, my future voice sensational.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was just like, Okay, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Because I find that very hard to believe that you
Speaker 1: can make it all the way to college and not
Speaker 1: know how to read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't believe it.
Speaker 3: Right, I simply don't. I simply don't believe it.
Speaker 1: I'm TT and I'm Zukiah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: All right, so obviously we're gonna be talking about reading
Speaker 1: and literacy and how it's changed over the years, I mean,
Speaker 1: from generation to generation. I also saw a headline that
Speaker 1: said that Gen Z is the first generation to cognitively
Speaker 1: underperform compared to like previous generations.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like this gets me right into what I know.
Speaker 1: I feel like every generation from my grandparents down, okay,
Speaker 1: was always saying y'all don't read enough. Y'all don't read enough.
Speaker 1: It feels like more to say everybody's just saying you
Speaker 1: don't read enough, you don't read enough. Yeah, we're always
Speaker 1: just pointing out the younger ones and saying, y'all got
Speaker 1: too much technology, you don't read enough, your attention span
Speaker 1: is whatever, whatever, Because I remember when we were kids,
Speaker 1: the big thing was, oh, all y'all kids do was
Speaker 1: watch TV. Y'all need to get outside and play, and
Speaker 1: we were like, okay. The one that I used to
Speaker 1: hear was like, do you know your work? Do you
Speaker 1: know your school books? The way you know those lyrics? No, okay,
Speaker 1: write those lyrics down on PA committed.
Speaker 3: This song by Bone Thugs. I've committed this this song
Speaker 3: by Bone Thugs and Harmony to hers.
Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the bone. Okay.
Speaker 3: Boom boom boom boom boom boom. Man, they don't know
Speaker 3: what they've on.
Speaker 1: I think I'm also part of the problem, okay, because
Speaker 1: the headlines have been blaming everything on reading and reading comprehension.
Speaker 1: But I've been spreading some misinformation myself. I saw a
Speaker 1: thread and it was like, the men can't flirt because
Speaker 1: they don't read. They don't read enough to be able
Speaker 1: to text you something that's emotionally captivated. I said, repost,
Speaker 1: I took it down lest you took it down down
Speaker 1: because I said, girl, you don't have no stats to
Speaker 1: back this up. Do you have gender separated statistics about
Speaker 1: men reading?
Speaker 2: No, you don't.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's get into what we want to know.
Speaker 2: I want to know how much of this is just clickbait,
Speaker 2: like just headlines to grab your attention.
Speaker 1: And I think before anybody panics and starts blaming TikTok,
Speaker 1: we need to really slow down and really understand what
Speaker 1: the research says. So I want to know actually factually
Speaker 1: what is going on, Like how are they making these headlines,
Speaker 1: what is it based off of and what does it
Speaker 1: mean for future generations?
Speaker 3: And what does it mean for millennials and Gen xers
Speaker 3: and things.
Speaker 1: Like that, Because we're all living in the same society right,
Speaker 1: interacting with one another.
Speaker 3: We're working with each other at our jobs. Okay, so
Speaker 3: let's jump into it.
Speaker 2: I think we're ready. Yeah, So I'll tell you. I
Speaker 2: did some googles I've looked at.
Speaker 1: I did some googles because I said, these headlines are
Speaker 1: referencing specific studies, right, and it's time to start picking
Speaker 1: some of those apart. I looked at some of the
Speaker 1: studies that they reference, but also global literacy rates. I
Speaker 1: also looked at our reading by state. Also, I started
Speaker 1: looking at our math. We've been It's not looking so
Speaker 1: bad for the math. I'm feeling good. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: where we should start is what is little like? How
Speaker 1: is literacy defined?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Because reading isn't just about knowing words, It's about following arguments,
Speaker 1: understanding nuance, detecting false hoods within a sentence, and connecting
Speaker 1: ideas across time. Okay, so let's jump into it then.
Speaker 1: So now that we have established what literacy is, right,
Speaker 1: let's actually talk about the study. So there are a
Speaker 1: couple of different sources to pool. There are these large
Speaker 1: international assessments that track skills over time. There are these
Speaker 1: national assessments that track skills over time, and some of
Speaker 1: those skills are reading, comprehension, vocabulary, problem solving. But then
Speaker 1: there are things that are measures of people's time being spent.
Speaker 1: So they might ask do a survey and say how
Speaker 1: much time do you spend reading per week or how
Speaker 1: much do you spend per day? So we're pulling all
Speaker 1: this information together to understand this trend and What researchers
Speaker 1: notice is that starting around the mid twenty two, scores
Speaker 1: stopped going up. And those scores were like what you said,
Speaker 1: reading comprehension, vocabulary, problem solving and things like that, and
Speaker 1: in some cases they went down. But the decline wasn't
Speaker 1: across everything. It was concentrated just on literacy heavy tasks, Okay,
Speaker 1: And I think that's important because the headlines that say
Speaker 1: they're not as smart is literacy the measure of smartness, right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about understanding long passages, following multi step arguments,
Speaker 1: interpreting written information and pulling meaning from context. That's not anything.
Speaker 1: It's not raw intelligence, it's not creativity, is not innovation,
Speaker 1: and it's not if you know how to use the
Speaker 1: operating system on your phone or your other technological device.
Speaker 1: Because gen Z is kicking everybody's but right, we're looking
Speaker 1: at you baby boomers. Okay, I'm tired of being the
Speaker 1: geek squad on call. Yeah. I think one important detail
Speaker 1: is that these stud he's compare people at the same age,
Speaker 1: just born in different years. So it's not kids today
Speaker 1: versus adults. It's eighteen year olds now versus eighteen year
Speaker 1: olds twenty or thirty years ago, and when the research
Speaker 1: is dig deeper, they actually find something interesting. They're finding
Speaker 1: that gen Z performs just fine on short discrete task okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but the performance drops when they need sustained attention and
Speaker 1: deep reading.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So what that tells us is that this isn't about ability,
Speaker 1: It's about exposure and practice. And if your daily life
Speaker 1: doesn't require long form reading, your brain gets less training
Speaker 1: in that aspect.
Speaker 2: But you might not need that, you know.
Speaker 1: I think you're making a very good point. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I've been seeing lately on the internet,
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere where somebody said practice makes permanent. If
Speaker 1: I don't have to practice it, it's not part of
Speaker 1: my permanent routine.
Speaker 3: You know exactly.
Speaker 1: I think we talk about this a lot, and the
Speaker 1: comparison our always make is that before calculators, everybody was
Speaker 1: doing the math by paper and doing it in their head.
Speaker 1: Then calculators came out, and then the mathematicians and scientists
Speaker 1: were saying, if you use a calculator, you're not really
Speaker 1: smart because it's something else is doing the work for you.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, now calculators are ubiquitous. They're on
Speaker 1: our phone, they're on our laptops, they're everywhere helping us
Speaker 1: calculate things. You can type in math problems into Google
Speaker 1: and it'll spit out the answer, and it just makes
Speaker 1: you more efficient, Like why take all this time to
Speaker 1: try and work this out when you know you can
Speaker 1: get to the answer and move on quickly. I think
Speaker 1: the other thing is I've been seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: people blaming what we're seeing, and I'm saying what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: I'm putting up the quotation marks because what's being said,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is not what's being said. But they're
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, these declines in literacy are because of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. But the studies are also pointing out that
Speaker 1: that decline showed up before the pandemic. So it's not
Speaker 1: just I'm tired of people blaming everything on zoom. Zoom
Speaker 1: does have some qualities, oh my gosh. And the same
Speaker 1: research shows that adults are actually reading less too, and
Speaker 1: that's backed up by other studies, including the American Time
Speaker 1: You study.
Speaker 3: So this isn't a specific failure quote unquote.
Speaker 2: Of gen z. This is across the board.
Speaker 3: We're all reading less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can see it in the data. So that
Speaker 1: same study, it looked at over two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: thousand Americans over twenty years, and reading for pleasure, not
Speaker 1: reading for your job, reading for whatever you for pleasure
Speaker 1: has dropped about forty percent.
Speaker 2: Okay. The other thing is.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talking about the kids, but who's reading to the kids? Okay,
Speaker 1: only two percent of adults said that they read with
Speaker 1: kids every day. So when we talk about gen Z
Speaker 1: struggling with deep reading, it's not that they're slacking off
Speaker 1: while everybody else is like buried in books and bookworms
Speaker 1: and everything like that. This is a cultural shift towards
Speaker 1: screens and short form content, and they're just the generation
Speaker 1: that's growing up inside of that shift.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, I think it's less about blaming a generation and
Speaker 1: more about asking a more context dependent question, like what
Speaker 1: happens now when we have a society where fewer people
Speaker 1: can deeply read and analyze and question what they're consuming.
Speaker 1: And I think this is the gotcha, gotcha because we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation about fewer people being able to deeply read,
Speaker 1: analyze and question what they're consuming. But this is at
Speaker 1: a time when literacy is actually a huge success story.
Speaker 1: So if you look back two hundred years, only one
Speaker 1: in ten people across the world. So now we're talking globally,
Speaker 1: not just in the United States, only one in ten
Speaker 1: could read and write. But today that is basically flipped.
Speaker 1: Those other nine those are the people who are literate
Speaker 1: across the globe. And so mass literacy is a very
Speaker 1: recent phenomenon, okay, and that isn't something that happened by accident.
Speaker 1: Countries poured money and policy into basic education and so
Speaker 1: the result was that literacy expanded, Gender gaps and race
Speaker 1: gaps started to close. And that's part of what made
Speaker 1: modern life, the life that we're living now so possible,
Speaker 1: having democracy, science, the Internet, all of it. So now
Speaker 1: we're asking what does it mean if we have literacy
Speaker 1: on paper but we're not practicing deep reading in real time,
Speaker 1: in real life and talking about policy like bring back
Speaker 1: the book program and the pizza Hut coupons. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: oh my god, remember when you have Yes when and
Speaker 1: I remember I was at school. We had like book
Speaker 1: reading competitions and like the class that want would get
Speaker 1: a pizza party. I don't think they're doing that anymore.
Speaker 1: So are they doing pizza parties? The kids even still
Speaker 1: eat pizzas, and they would slice those pizzas into the
Speaker 1: hunterred slices, A hundred slices right, one slice would be
Speaker 1: as thin as a hand.
Speaker 2: Gg'd lying, y'all, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like this. It wasn't it was it was awful.
Speaker 3: It was awful.
Speaker 1: But I think everything you're saying is so so true.
Speaker 1: If you can't slow down and deeply read.
Speaker 2: You're vulnerable.
Speaker 1: A big factor is that how we read has changed.
Speaker 1: We don't read long form text the way that previous
Speaker 1: generations did. We skim and scroll and jump from linkedlin.
Speaker 1: My friend is jumping from linked very Okay, if you're
Speaker 1: not subscribed to her blog, you need to Okay, a
Speaker 1: thousand links.
Speaker 3: It's the land of a thousand links and footnotes.
Speaker 2: Okay, on that souf. I think you know.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing, though, is we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: kids and the younger generations. But let's zoom out again globally.
Speaker 1: If you look like in the Middle East and North Africa,
Speaker 1: the younger generations there are way more literate than the
Speaker 1: older generations. So that even that's another interesting caveat too.
Speaker 1: Not only do we have more people reading, we have
Speaker 1: more younger people reading them before and so I think,
Speaker 1: like you said, we're just adapting to the way we
Speaker 1: see information. Yeah, your brain adapts to what you ask
Speaker 1: it to do. And if you're reading happens in captions
Speaker 1: and tweets and headlines, you're training your brain for speed
Speaker 1: and not depth. And I think the other thing the
Speaker 1: unsaid is like when we look at how we're measuring literacy,
Speaker 1: like there are these tests, these checkpoints, like a lot
Speaker 1: of teaching to the test, and you know, I have
Speaker 1: a whole thing about that multiple choice Yes, I love
Speaker 1: a scantron sometimes ye okay. I think also we start
Speaker 1: to get kids who are just trying to eliminate wrong
Speaker 1: answers instead of thinking about what the right answer actually
Speaker 1: is and thinking and sitting with the information. So I
Speaker 1: want to get on my soapbox about that. But I
Speaker 1: think if we're going to look at the United States,
Speaker 1: we do have to look at the nation's report card,
Speaker 1: and we should be I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 1: we should be a little scared to show it. It's
Speaker 1: been tracking reading and some of the other subjects like
Speaker 1: math and writing for many decades, okay, And I think
Speaker 1: some of this also some of the rumblings about literacy
Speaker 1: have come from that particular assessment. It's national, it has
Speaker 1: state level information. You can go all the way down
Speaker 1: the districts. And I think we should focus on the
Speaker 1: last two sets of reading data that we have, and
Speaker 1: that's for grades four and eight and in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four and twenty twenty two is where we have test
Speaker 1: results for reading. So overall, if you look at the
Speaker 1: average of both the fourth and the eighth grade reading assessments,
Speaker 1: there is a significant decrease in reading in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four compared to twenty twenty two. A couple of things
Speaker 1: to point out about that, though, is that both fourth
Speaker 1: grade and eighth grade are down on average, and that's
Speaker 1: not just a gen Z thing, because fourth grade in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four is technically Generation Alpha. Eighth grade is
Speaker 1: right on the line for gen Z. Also, you can
Speaker 1: break this down into percentiles. Percentiles always be messing with with. Okay,
Speaker 1: go slow form, Okay, So I like to start right
Speaker 1: in the middle. I say, if I line everybody up
Speaker 1: from lowest score to highest score, where's the fifty percent mark? Right?
Speaker 1: Everybody at the fifty percent mark and below is in
Speaker 1: the fiftieth percentile. So the higher the number, the more
Speaker 1: people that are under you. So you want to be high,
Speaker 1: and if you are an achiever, you want to be high.
Speaker 1: So like when people say you're in the ninety fifth percentile,
Speaker 1: that means ninety five percent of the people that took
Speaker 1: the test.
Speaker 2: Score lower than you. They have a value that falls
Speaker 2: below you.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So people have been saying, oh, the reading
Speaker 1: is down, reading is down, but for our high performing readers,
Speaker 1: So people that were in the ninetieth percentile twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two to twenty twenty four, no significant change. They didn't
Speaker 1: get any didn't get any better at reading, at literacy,
Speaker 1: didn't get any worse. And that's for both the fourth
Speaker 1: grade and the eighth grade. So it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: everybody just dropped. Most of the drops were happening at
Speaker 1: the tenth, twenty fifth, and fiftieth percentile range. Okay, And
Speaker 1: so that's something to kind of pay attention to as well.
Speaker 1: So once we start, the more information we have, the
Speaker 1: more we can, you know, start to really get a
Speaker 1: full story. Yeah, because then that makes me feel like
Speaker 1: the gap between people is widening, and I want I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know is it specific demographics of people or
Speaker 1: kids that are following in the fiftieth percentile or below?
Speaker 1: And I guess we will only know that with more research.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the part of the story. I
Speaker 1: think we're not talking about enough. Okay, So we're talking
Speaker 1: about a couple things. See, now, you got me all
Speaker 1: in my education back.
Speaker 2: I call them jales.
Speaker 3: She's an educator, y'all.
Speaker 2: We're talking about fourth and eighth grade, right.
Speaker 1: And we have numbers from twenty twenty two and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four for them, but we don't have numbers for
Speaker 1: twelfth grade. When people are graduating and going out into
Speaker 1: the world. We don't have a reading assessment for them
Speaker 1: any later than twenty nineteen. So the last reading assessment
Speaker 1: we know about what a twelfth grader is doing was
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Okay wow.
Speaker 1: And because there have been recent cuts the National Assessment
Speaker 1: Governing Board that's who sets the policy for the nation's
Speaker 1: report card, they're saying, hey, we're under pressure because there
Speaker 1: have been budget cuts and we're trying to find some
Speaker 1: budget deficiencies. So they are proposing that they won't be
Speaker 1: doing that comprehensive test at the state level for twelfth
Speaker 1: graders to assess their reading. They won't be doing that
Speaker 1: until twenty thirty two. Wow, So we're losing a clear
Speaker 1: ability to compare over time what happens. So if you
Speaker 1: care about literacy, you don't just care about what's happening
Speaker 1: in the fourth grade and eighth grade. You care about
Speaker 1: literacy as a life outcome. And we're losing our ability
Speaker 1: to look at that. And that is a direct result
Speaker 1: of cuts to the Department of Education.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So we're going to be feeling the effects of this
Speaker 1: for a very long time. I mean, if you're not
Speaker 1: making those assessments, like you said, how can you make changes?
Speaker 1: How can you say, Okay, this is we're going to
Speaker 1: start putting more focus on this area or that area.
Speaker 3: If you don't know what the problem is, how do
Speaker 3: you fix it?
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think that's part of the thing.
Speaker 1: That's something we're seeing complaints about across the board. We're
Speaker 1: making these cuts to these systems that track and that
Speaker 1: become like our early warning signs. You know, this is
Speaker 1: not to get us back to the biology, but this
Speaker 1: was the same thing we saw with bird flu. You know,
Speaker 1: when we had the episode people saying we don't have
Speaker 1: the monetoring systems that we had before, and so now
Speaker 1: we're going to be in a position where we're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to identify where the gaps are closing,
Speaker 1: where they're widening, if policies are working in there or not, because.
Speaker 2: We're not measuring these things.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: And so the bottom line is that this isn't a
Speaker 1: kids these days are lazy situation. This is about systems,
Speaker 1: the education system, the text system, and attention economies. Like
Speaker 1: because the Department of Education, when you think of public
Speaker 1: schools and how they get their funding and the tests
Speaker 1: that the students have to take, they are like, we
Speaker 1: have to make sure that these kids pass these tests
Speaker 1: and things like that. But if they're not even looking
Speaker 1: at the tests, they're being able to assess the outcomes,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we're cooked.
Speaker 2: We're cooked cooked. Okay.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that's really worth saying, and
Speaker 1: we've kind of woven it into the undertones, but I
Speaker 1: want to say it explicitly. Gen Z and Jen Alpha,
Speaker 1: they are incredible at things that the older generation, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, don't stand a chance. Yes, absolutely, visual literacy,
Speaker 1: digital navigation, pattern recognition across platforms. It's more likely that
Speaker 1: somebody in gen Z is going to recognize AI before
Speaker 1: I do. Listen, Okay, Like there's times where I'm there
Speaker 1: was a TikTok of rabbits jumping on a trampoline at night,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yo, this is so cool, and
Speaker 1: the gen z is in the comments are like this
Speaker 1: is AI clearly, and I.
Speaker 3: Was like oops, oopsy oops, yeah, like oh oh yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was talking about a different video with the
Speaker 1: bunnies jumping on a trampoline.
Speaker 3: Never mind, never mind, never mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like those skills don't just show up
Speaker 1: in traditional intelligence tests, like that's when you're taking a test.
Speaker 1: They're not showing you things like that. And so gen
Speaker 1: Z isn't less smart. They're just a different kind of smart,
Speaker 1: like the type of smart they are values different things.
Speaker 1: Back in the day day, Yeah, you need to read
Speaker 1: you know this war.
Speaker 3: And peace and all these things like that. Now you don't,
Speaker 3: for real.
Speaker 1: You can read it in your leisure but it's not
Speaker 1: something that you know defines like who is intelligent.
Speaker 3: And who isn't.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing is that we've come to
Speaker 1: a point where we've started to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know what this word means or in the
Speaker 1: same way. You know, just like when people are saying
Speaker 1: the same way you're talking about calculators, that's the same
Speaker 1: thing people are saying when that little squiggly line used
Speaker 1: to come up in word. And I'm like, I can
Speaker 1: write click and see what that means. Okay, I can
Speaker 1: write exactly what's happening. Yeah, And I'm like, you can.
Speaker 2: Know what every word is in the headline and still
Speaker 2: not understand what it means for you.
Speaker 1: And you know, when we first started Dope last this
Speaker 1: is something we talked about, you know, and such a
Speaker 1: good point. We first started with science literacy and then
Speaker 1: we talked about financial literacy and civic literacy, media literacy.
Speaker 1: Thinking about science literacy just off the top and thinking
Speaker 1: about some of our early episodes, like it's not just like,
Speaker 1: do you know what antibiotics are? That's not what for us,
Speaker 1: that's what we're thinking about for science literacy. It's like
Speaker 1: when you see somebody say drug X cures disease, lie,
Speaker 1: you have to stop and ask like was that in mice?
Speaker 2: Was it in humans?
Speaker 1: You know? Was it thirty people or three thousand people.
Speaker 1: Was it a randomized trial or was it self reported?
Speaker 2: Healing right now?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Who paid for it? Shit?
Speaker 3: It?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean, and financial literacy isn't just reading oh,
Speaker 1: credit card debt tops one point three trillion and scrolling on.
Speaker 1: It's knowing that if your APR is twenty four percent
Speaker 1: and you only make the minimum payment, that couch you
Speaker 1: bought basically turns into two couches that you're going to
Speaker 1: have to push together and pay for, Okay, And I
Speaker 1: think over time, Yeah, And I think one of my
Speaker 1: favorite callbacks was when we had ccon for student loans
Speaker 1: like forgiveness versus forbearans and just I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: owe anymore? Does it mean you just got a little
Speaker 1: period where you don't have to pay? Like it's on
Speaker 1: pause right now, but it.
Speaker 2: Might come back. Listen.
Speaker 1: We're all not literate when it comes to that. It
Speaker 1: was very confusing. I was like, this is not an
Speaker 1: easy thing to understand, honestly.
Speaker 2: And my science literacy didn't help, not at all.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm just as confused as you are.
Speaker 3: Please send your questions to CZ And I think.
Speaker 1: You've really been bringing a lot of the policy angle
Speaker 1: over the past year, you know, with you being in
Speaker 1: public policy now and everything like civic literacy.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmmm.
Speaker 1: It's isn't just recognizing voter id or school choice as phrases.
Speaker 1: It's being able to read a new story about a
Speaker 1: new voter of law and answer whose life does this
Speaker 1: make easier or harder? What level of government is doing this?
Speaker 1: Is it the local government, the state government, the federal government?
Speaker 1: And where would I even show up if I wanted
Speaker 1: to fight it? It's understanding all of those things. You
Speaker 1: feel like you got too many potholes in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: Who do you go to? Do you know what elected
Speaker 1: representative you would need to send a letter to if
Speaker 1: you want to put in a stop sign on your corner,
Speaker 1: which I do. I sent a letter, very good. I
Speaker 1: sent a letter, Honey. I was like, we need to
Speaker 1: stop sign. These people are going through here, these speed
Speaker 1: humps not doing it. And then media literacy, which we
Speaker 1: talk about a lot on this show. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about it with the parents, but it's happening
Speaker 1: to us too now. You know you got to look
Speaker 1: and say, you know who made this, who is it for?
Speaker 1: Who gets paid? If it goes viral? And is this
Speaker 1: information or is it just an ad dressed up like information?
Speaker 1: Because advertisements Sometimes I'm reading stuff and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a long pitch for me to.
Speaker 2: Buy your workshop, you know, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But I think all of this is something we've recognized
Speaker 1: as an issue over time, and none of this, none
Speaker 1: of it is part of reading assessment.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I think when people hear the word literacy, that's the
Speaker 1: first thing that comes to their mind. And that's not
Speaker 1: the full picture at all. If we want smarter societies,
Speaker 1: we don't need harder tests or to make people read
Speaker 1: longer form. We just need people who can understand complex
Speaker 1: information no matter the size. Yeah, you know, And so
Speaker 1: being able to read something, process it and have a
Speaker 1: takeaway from it. And so it's about understanding what you're consuming.
Speaker 1: The good news is that if you don't like where
Speaker 1: you are right now, if you want to read, look
Speaker 1: in the mirror, say hey, neighbor, Turn to your left,
Speaker 1: turn to your right, and say hey, neighbor, if you
Speaker 1: want to read more. We you know, this is happening
Speaker 1: right before National Reading Month, which is in March. And
Speaker 1: if you're part of the ninety eight percent of adults
Speaker 1: that aren't reading to a kid. Please do go to
Speaker 1: the kids classroom and read a book.
Speaker 2: They like it, they love it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they lose their minds. I would encourage
Speaker 1: folks to just start reading things more often. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily long form, but just you know, trying to take
Speaker 1: things in, even if it's just ten minutes a day.
Speaker 1: You know, I read Atomic Habits because I have a
Speaker 1: very big problem of trying to go straight from never
Speaker 1: doing a thing to like, now I'm going to read for.
Speaker 2: An hour a day. And it's like, you don't have
Speaker 2: to do that. Actually, you can make tiny changes.
Speaker 1: You can just say rip minutes a day and those
Speaker 1: changes repeated, ad up, Like you don't have to start
Speaker 1: reading War and Peace like you said by candlelight to
Speaker 1: feel the impacts. You know, let technology help you. Start
Speaker 1: with an app like the news app that's already on
Speaker 1: your iPhone. You can go in there and read news articles,
Speaker 1: or you can borrow an ebook on Libby. He's an
Speaker 1: app where you can borrow books from your local library
Speaker 1: and then just you know, start chipping away at it.
Speaker 1: I think the change I want to see it's gotta
Speaker 1: start right here, and it's gotta start with our with
Speaker 1: our audience. I try to seeing people misread what the
Speaker 1: original poster said, even on social media, like just let's
Speaker 1: just make social media better with context, with two things
Speaker 1: being true, with anecdote versus statistical information, like large sets
Speaker 1: of information. I just yes, honestly, And if you're choosing
Speaker 1: to get your information from a video, at least watch
Speaker 1: the whole video through, babe, because y'all be upset in
Speaker 1: the comments and I'm like, you.
Speaker 2: Didn't watch the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You clearly didn't. You're missing the point. And the point
Speaker 1: was ten seconds in. You watched the first five seconds
Speaker 1: and then got in the comments section angry. Calm down, yeah,
Speaker 1: and keep listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think this is anecdotal, so I can already
Speaker 1: say it in advance. There's a lot we can learn
Speaker 1: from gen Z. I'm tired of us piling on. Let's
Speaker 1: stop piling on. It's too much, it's too much. Leave
Speaker 1: them alone. They're just like any other generation. Every generation
Speaker 1: has their thing, and like they're no different from a
Speaker 1: baby boomer. You go back to the baby boomer time,
Speaker 1: baby Boomer's parents, what are they.
Speaker 3: Gen uh whatever? It would be. Dust bowl hasn't ready.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. I don't know. It might be right.
Speaker 1: Generation gold miners or whatever, I don't know. Uh, they
Speaker 1: their parents also believed that they were lazy, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's just we all just got to understand
Speaker 1: that the context in which we are growing and developing
Speaker 1: in change is from generation to generation. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: have to understand that everybody's just out here trying to
Speaker 1: make it and we're doing the best we can with.
Speaker 2: What we got to say. Cut it out.
Speaker 3: You can find us on X and.
Speaker 1: Instagram at Dope Labs podcast. You can find me tt
Speaker 1: on X, Threads and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho,
Speaker 1: and you can find Zakiya at Ze said so. Dope
Speaker 1: Labs is a production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising producer
Speaker 1: is Keegan Zemma. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and
Speaker 1: mixed by James Sparber. Lemonada's Senior Vice President of Content
Speaker 1: and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast
Speaker 1: is Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 2: Marketing lead is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 1: suki Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs
Speaker 1: is executive produced by us T T Show Dia and
Speaker 1: Zakiah Wattley.