NORFOLK — Throughout the past recent years, it has become quietly prominent that there is a literacy crisis in the United States because of the pandemic and the over usage of screens.
We live in a society where a devastating number of adults cannot read and if they can, they struggle to comprehend what they have just covered.
The National Literacy Institute reported telling statistics about the literacy rate in the United States in the fall of 2024.
“On average, 79 percent of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024 and 21 percent of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024,” the National Literacy Institute reported. “54 percent of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20 percent are below 5th-grade level).”
With adult illiteracy being already at an all-time high, the threat to children and their ability to read is also increasingly in danger. If parents already struggle to read, the chance they instill the importance of reading in their children is low or even nonexistent.
The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic also significantly impacted education, which affected illiteracy rates in schools across the country. The pandemic kept students out of school for a long time. Many of these students were missing key concepts through remote learning.
The National Assessment Governing Board (NAEP) assessed students and found that the pandemic has influenced testing and literacy rates.
“In 2022, only 26 percent of eighth graders were at or above proficient in math, much worse than before the pandemic (33 percent in 2019),” The NAEP reported, “less than a third of fourth graders (32 percent) were at or above proficient in reading, two percentage.”
Sean Reardon, professor of poverty and inequality, Stanford Graduate School of Education spoke about how the pandemic has impacted students.
“It’s not readily visible to parents when their children have fallen behind earlier cohorts, but the data from 7,800 school districts show clearly that this is the case,” said Reardon, “the educational impacts of the pandemic were not only historically large but were disproportionately visited on communities with many low-income and minority students.”
The overuse age of screens and technology has additionally affected the lives of children and how they learn.
An Education Week analysis of NAEP background data found that in both grades four and eight, spending more time using a computer or digital device for English and language arts work was associated with lower reading proficiency on the test. This means that students who used tablets and screens more to lest scored on average lower than eight points.
With more technology being upgraded in schools instead of traditional paper and pencil, there has been a disconnect in education and technology.
Patricia Alexander, an education professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who studies print and digital reading development spoke of how the usage technology has been in schools.
“Children have become much more immersed in their technologies than we ever thought they would be,” said Alexander, “and yet essentially what we’re doing … is to put tablets in the hands of kindergartners and assume they will know how to regulate their use of them.”
To offset the illiteracy crisis in America it is recommended that parents read with their children and instill the importance of reading and writing into their daily lives. Adults can choose to put down screens and read more to offset the crisis.
