That is the question rattling bibliophiles and students with deadlines awake at night (I am both). Peering at my bedside table, I see Ocean Vuong’s “Emperor of Gladness” and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke stacked between neuroscience research articles and assigned texts on anthropological theory. 

These readings typically range from high-priority to leisurely, but the categories become irrelevant when the clock turns and the books remain unturned. Students often find themselves in a routine predicament of deciding what to read first before retreating to the comfort of their predictable algorithms. 

A 2017 study found that only 37% of incoming freshmen are proficient in 12th-grade reading standards. Scientists and scholars often point to digital culture and the rise of AI as the potential culprits.  A frequent  complaint I hear from professors is that students are too focused on their screens and lack attention spans for class. Although this critique holds some truth, it doesn’t get to the root cause. The truth is our focus has never really progressed and only gotten more distracted with time. And, contrary to popular belief, the screens are not entirely to blame. 

In “Too Much to Know” historian Ann Blair traces the anxieties of “information overload” back to the Renaissance, particularly after the advent of the printing press. She traces this apprehension in various cultures. Ann Blair mentions the Roman philosopher Seneca, who would warn his peers of collecting excessive volumes as it would make them “discursive and unsteady.” Even the Bible outlines the endless production of texts in Ecclesiastes 12:12: “Of making books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” 

Humans have always erred on the side of caution. But could it be possible we became too taken with our own warnings, and quietly transformed centuries of concern about over-reading into a culture of under-reading? As someone with a growing to-be-read list, I wonder if I will ever even scratch the surface. 

The accumulation of reading materials is perhaps the greatest paradox of the modern age. We’re told we have access to any information in the world but no guidebook on how to navigate it. From Twitter threads on environmental catastrophes to war strategies, the average student is drowning in an unreliable influx of information. 

Writer Ria Chopra describes our current moment as a “permacrisis”—the permanent state of stress and instability that young people exist in. Between economic uncertainty, live-streamed genocides and the lingering effects of COVID-19, many students retreat to familiar distractions as a form of “default mode.” In that light, a high screentime may be more of a coping mechanism than a discipline problem.

It’s not that college students are suddenly getting dumber or losing their ability to read. They’re simply fatigued by the choice of reading everything. Social Psychologist Roy F. Baumeister coined this phenomenon as ‘decision fatigue’—the mental paralysis experienced after making too many exhaustive choices. 

Amidst this fatigue, a byte-sized YouTube video is relatively less cognitively demanding compared to a 250-page novel. This superficial consumption of knowledge makes reading classical or philosophical texts feel less rewarding.

​Former Google Ethicist, Tristan Harris, also compared scrolling to a “Vegas slot machine,” where unpredictable reward reinforces compulsive behaviour. Scrolling becomes pleasurable, even if it makes us feel horrible later. Even Aza Raskin, the mind who created infinite scrolling, expresses regrets for making boredom, once a gateway to reading, inaccessible. 

Without flashy engineered content, reading can feel like an indulgence. Mass material culture around reading is shifting rapidly and at the precipice of extinction. Just last year, publishing houses decided to cease production of the beloved mass-market paperbacks, once readily sold at gas stations and corner kiosks. 

“The Atlantic” contributor Rose Horowitch states that  the problem reflects “a shift in values rather than in skill sets.” College students can read books, but only if they want to. With skyrocketing college tuition, many students would rather focus their time on working on their resumes and towards paying off their student debts. Adelphi junior biology major on the pre-dental track Aleeza Khurram said, “As competition for graduate schools increases, my peers and I focus more on experiences that will strengthen our applications instead of reading. It becomes a hobby that can easily be pushed to the side to make room for other obligations. After a long day of classes or work, it is easy to turn to our phones as a source of entertainment instead of books, as it is less mentally taxing [than] being stuck in a loop of doomscrolling.”

​A 2025 study defines doomscrolling as a “state of hyper-vigilance” with negative, threatening, content that heightens anxiety and exacerbates cognitive processes. In today’s digital reality, one would assume critical thinking to be a high-demand skill used to maneuver misinformation and manipulated content. Yet, it remains undervalued, overshadowed by the emergence of AI tools and human dependency upon them. When the Library of Alexandria resides at your fingertips, the focus shifts from thoughtful analysis to passive skimming.

So, how do we read thoughtfully when we’re bombarded with deadlines and digital noise? Some scholars suggest the answer lies in cultivating conscious space for reading. Patty Krawec, an Indigenous writer, discusses “dawisijigem,” an Ojibwe centered on the intentional act of making physical and mental space for reflection. She encourages readers to implement this principle into practice by engaging deeply with “books from a particular place or people.”

To read books by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) authors, universities must also confront their curriculum which mostly comprises eurocentric texts with racist and colonial language. Growing up in Pakistan, British authors were often prioritized—an unfortunate product of colonialism. In 2021, The New York Times reported on Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Dominican-immigrant historian at Princeton University, challenged to eradicate “whiteness” from the classics, even if it meant the death of the discipline itself. 

Efforts to diversify texts are further complicated by widespread book bans. According to PEN America, nearly 23,000 books have been banned in public schools—the highest number in Unites States history. Limited exposure to diverse perspectives inevitably narrows how students engage and participate in discussions of non-Western cultures and belief systems. 

To ameliorate this, Adelphi University Associate Professor of Anthropology Kathryn Krasinski suggests that recontextualising non-Western texts could make them more engaging. She said, “I think fundamentally the kind of reading that I get to read and write on is part of a broader conversation. Maybe if we framed those works within their position, folks would be more interested in knowing a little bit more about them.”

One way to revive that conversation is through book clubs. 

Junior communications major and vice-president of Adelphi’s Panthers for Progress​ club Natalie Ward co-founded a campus book club last fall that focuses on leftist books from international authors. She said, “Students at Adelphi often don’t like to do things that don’t benefit them tangibly, like getting a section on a resume or extra credit.” 

She added, “A book club is an antithesis to that mentality and relies on learning and community as the only motivation for going. Many of us have made friends through the book club, and we’ve learned a lot from each other about the world around us. Reading is slow, it is patient, and it is an act of self-care to better oneself through it.”  

Reading has always been political. In an era of misinformation and AI-generated content, books offer something radical: uninterrupted focus. Reading, therefore, becomes the most potent remedy against propaganda. As Aldous Huxley wrote, “Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make their life full, significant, and interesting.” 

As a child, the liberty of reading anything fueled my bouts of passion and curiosity towards books. I was never forced to finish a book series I did not enjoy, or swap a young-adult novel for classical literature. That freedom mattered until academia complicated that relationship. 

Academically assigned texts re-introduce the idea of quantity over quality. Reading becomes a metric of intelligence: the more you read, the more you know and the more participation points you earn. In these environments, readers and non-readers unknowingly form an intellectual hierarchy that rewards performative reading over genuine, critical discussions. 

There will always be too much to read. But, instead of feeling overwhelmed by it,we can choose to be deliberate. Read books that meet you where you are and where you want to go. Move between yaoi fanfiction and Homer’s metaphors without guilt. What you read matters less than how you read it. As academic Bekah Waalkes suggests, all it takes is “a willingness to dedicate a few minutes a day, and maybe a few new habits.”

To read or not to read… William Shakespeare and I might agree that in a world overflowing with books, choosing to read something is better than nothing. To be is better than not to be.