America is facing a literacy crisis. According to a survey by YouGov, nearly half of all Americans did not read a single book in 2025. Among 18-29 year olds, about 60% read only one book last year. At Sacred Heart, that statistic varies, with some students not reading at all.
“I’m not gonna lie, I haven’t touched a book since high school. I’ve never even bought a textbook here,” said sophomore Blake Mattessich. “I just have no inclination to literature. It just doesn’t interest me. I spend free time doomscrolling, playing video games, or hanging with my boys.”
“I used to read a lot when I was younger,” said sophomore Hillary Rivera. “But after COVID, I just stopped reading physical books.”
Other students are trying to restore their reading habits.
“I fear I have not read a lot lately,” said sophomore Hannah Manzo. “But I’m trying to do so this year, I need to doomscroll less.”
Literacy is not completely dead, as some students are still active readers.
“I’ve been getting into the classics like Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, but I’ve also read a lot of romance novels,” said junior Elle Lombardo. “I do consider reading to be important, it helps with building critical thinking skills and a lot of other skills we’d need for the future.”
“I actually just got done with a nonfiction book about the last days of the Romanov family before the Russian Revolution,” said sophomore Sergei Cicogna. “I tend to read lots of non-fiction. I like expanding my palette of knowledge. Books can contain huge swaths of information that would have to be condensed in other media, so there’s a huge value in that. There’s so much in the Romanov book I read that you would never find in a bio film or a Wikipedia article.”
“I am a voracious reader myself,” said senior Liam Conway. “I consider my life to be better because of what I’ve read. Political theory, stage plays, novels, there is so much within literature that can change your life.”
The changing of the times is one of the many reasons why literacy is on the decline.
“I think the decline in literacy is kind of scary, but obviously everyone’s learning differently now. Kids now are growing up in a generation of screens and tend to have a shorter attention span,” said Lombardo.
Despite living in a more technology-based world, there are still some benefits to reading that can’t be replicated elsewhere.
“I really would recommend to anyone to just pick up a book and sit with it. You never know where it might take you,” said Conway.
