We can read to learn or to be entertained. It's none of my business why other people read. But what I'm pointing to here is that because videos are generally more entertaining and more plentiful, we're being pulled in the direction of reading purely for entertainment, to reassure ourselves. (Writers compete with pure entertainers for attention.)

But reading isn't so entertaining, is it? Reading is harder work than watching a YouTube video or a TV show. So writers have to dumb-down their messages and lower the intellectual bar.

As a result, we're less informed than we used to be and than we need to be to run our high-tech, globalized world. Just look at the sorry state of American culture, from Trumpism, to the Twitter wars, to gridlock and consumerism. Or look at our self-destructive ravaging of the world's ecosystems. Maybe we're making such bad collective decisions because we don't read properly enough. We don't know what we're doing anymore.

We're being conned and infantilized, and we're just going along for the ride like we deserve to be entertained as much as possible. Is that our primary obligation, to be entertained whenever we're on our free time? To keep everything light and vapid? In that case, we might not be serious enough to meet the challenges brought on by our scientific and technological progress, and by our modern freedoms.