The essence of serious reading, and that means mining books for knowledge, education, entertainment and enlightenment, is vanishing.
Reading was already waning to begin with, abetted by high-speed Internet which was instrumental in the shutdown of not just bookstores but also traditional businesses, trades and professions. Yet, a stunning anti-reading antecedent has emerged: Gen Zs regard reading as intimidating. American university academicians, in reporting this bizarre fear of reading, discovered that their Gen Z students avoided authors like Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce or George Orwell like the plague.
They cannot bring themselves to examine civilisational tomes of science, philosophy, history, culture and politics. To be sure, the Gen Zs still do read: memes, links and condensed versions of whatever passes off as news, appearing on their social media timeline, viralled by friends. In this "intellectual" bubble, they submit assignments and papers based on research no further than the gaze of their smartphones without referencing technical books or documents, unless they are handpicked by a search engine or the latest rage: cheat sheets of generative artificial intelligence chatbots.
Apparently, social media has re-engineered the Gen Zs' brains into units of "non-reading" readers. The question is, are college students' reading habits similarly degenerating? Perhaps not, judging by the popularity of the Madani Book Voucher programme that distributed six million books.
In promoting literacy and lifelong learning besides supporting the moribund book industry, 3.2 million out of 3.5 million vouchers were redeemed. The 93.56 per cent redemption rate translated into six million paper books valued at RM262 million.
All it needed was this incentive because let's face it, people are de-motivated by the financial torture of book-buying. An acclaimed book is pricier than the combined monthly subscriptions to Netflix, Spotify and a data plan, a far more practical prospect.
Cynics sniff that the six million books were giveaways but they miss the point: the fact that the books were snapped up meant the programme overcame fool's ignorance and apathy.
Other than making books affordable, how to further encourage reading beyond the voucher programme? Take Australia, which is experimenting with a new law barring minors below 16 access to social media, a move that's either hasty, technically irrelevant or timely to stop teen brain rot.
Savvy teenagers will find resourceful ways to circumvent the ban. It will be tough prying away their emotional social media connection, whether real or artificial. The addiction to clickbait and dopamine-induced feedback may trigger withdrawal symptoms, like wailing and sobbing.
Think of the positives: the ban shields teens from malevolent memes and stalking by scammers, paedophiles, human traffickers and prostitution rings. Not that it'll guarantee a return to book-reading but it's a start. It'll be up to parents to manage the crisis, perhaps introducing the kids to a classic, good old-fashioned book.