The UK’s Literacy Crisis: How Did We Get Here

This year, 30% of students across the UK didn’t pass core subjects like English and maths, and 6.6 million adults in the UK have very poor literacy skills. That's 1 in 6 adults aged 18 to 65, according to statistics from the National Literacy Trust.

This crisis is only getting worse; many children are now starting school without even the most basic reading skills. Children no longer read in their spare time, and their parents aren’t doing much about it. With the cost-of-living crisis rising, many households need a double income to afford living expenses with a child, meaning parents no longer have time to sit with their children and teach them to read.

Many parents' solution is to give their child phones and tablets, where they spend most of their time on social media. Social media companies like Meta have been sued, as claimants have said that their social media models are designed to be addictive, with some young people saying that social media addiction has ruined their lives. Facebook and Instagram have promised to introduce time limits and night-time blocks for children, but this is only the start for helping young people. Books are also becoming more expensive, so many parents refuse to spend money on something their child might not even read, or on something considered single-use.

One of the biggest social media platforms is TikTok, where short-form content has become the norm and is used by children and adults alike. The average user spends 1 hour and 37 minutes a day on TikTok, according to Exploding Topics. The style of content is making people’s attention spans shorter. While people who grew up with YouTube would have been used to 20-minute to even hour-long content, nowadays most people scroll through videos after a few seconds. 

Language used on social media is also causing us to lose our expanded vocabulary. While before we might have used words like stylish, elegant or expensive, we have simply switched to using words like chic. Children writing essays and exams will use words like unalived himself, if someone puts effort into their looks, they are looksmaxxing, if they wear perfume, they are smellmaxing etc. We are losing the ability to form varied sentences. 

We of course can’t say social media has been all bad for reading, as there are many channels and accounts that create educational content, which many GCSE students use to help them revise. Short bursts of information can help our brains feel less overwhelmed and therefore memorise things more easily with repetition. 

This crisis is also affecting grammar, and many people no longer know the difference between where and we’re, or their, there, and they’re. This crisis is, of course, not new, but for a long time the issue mainly affected impoverished children, but has started to affect all children across the board.

The UK is also losing its free access to books. We lose about 40 libraries per year. Not only are they an accessible place for books; for many, it’s also a place to build community. But with books losing their importance, councils no longer see the need to keep them open. 

Some online users, specifically on ‘BookTok ’, have also said that they skip narrative descriptions and only read the dialogue. Reading has been turned into a competition, with people claiming they have read 40 books in a year, but can it really be considered reading a book if the majority of the actual world-building is skipped?

Many people also get their information from ChatGPT, which doesn’t always provide correct information. Some users have said they have asked for spellings from ChatGPT, only for it to tell them incorrect ones. 

Studies are also warning that the literacy crisis could increase the risk of dementia. A study by Miguel Arce Rentería and others has shown that illiterate people are twice as likely to develop dementia.

So next time you are scrolling through reels or TikTok, why not pick up a book or read one of the many articles on Luna? Even 30 minutes of reading a day can help us stop this crisis. 

Written by, Nat Synak