The Written Word is Dying
Can it be Saved?
Video has become the default for most people, and it's killing active consumption. A wise 80s punk band was half right, video did kill the radio star, but now it's killing the written word. Why is video suddenly making such an impact? Is this an overnight thing, or has it been a long time coming?
The Written Word Endured
In the 70s and 80s, it was obvious that video was killing radio, but it didn't seem to have as much of an impact on reading and writing. Society was reading a lot after the invention of the radio. Books and newspapers flourished in the early 20th century. Sure, the radio was mainly used for wartime communication, but after WWI and WWII, the radio hit its full entertainment stride. It was quickly followed by the television and then the personal computer, but the written word still flourished. Where did the written word really start to fall off? The democratization of video creation.
A Camcorder in Your Pocket
The democratization of video didn't start to happen in the 70s and 80s. The average person could go to an electronics store to buy a VHS camcorder, but the process of producing something that looked good and felt compelling was hard. The tipping point was when the average person had a video camera on their smartphone. This meant anyone could make a video, seamlessly. No big and expensive equipment necessary. This allowed people to record and edit within minutes. This trend also started to move professional-level equipment to becoming more affordable and easier to use. In order to publish quickly, a new service had to be created. YouTube.
Access
While there were predecessors to YouTube, they were the only ones to get it right. Today (2024), YouTube is built into the zeitgeist of our society, just like Googling or Photoshopping something. While all of these tools and services have done amazing things to move us forward as a society, YouTube–more broadly–democratized video, has not.
Before I go any further, I am not a detractor of YouTube, generally speaking. I am a proponent of learning and learning deeply, and YouTube can be a tool in that process. Unfortunately, most people use it solely for entertainment. From my perspective, deep learning is no longer happening, and we need to be aware of it before it cannibalizes the current and future generations.
Video-First Culture
Since the shift to "video-first", video has become our main source of information. Video is everywhere – it's the first thing most people go to when needing to pacify a crying baby or themselves after a long day. While this mindless entertainment can be nice, passively consuming information all the time is not conducive to our development, regardless of our age.
Jump back 30 years – TV was the thing, video was here, but video was not everywhere. It was still limited to that large, heavy box in your living room. In most homes, they only had one of these, and it was generally used as a family unit, not for individual use. Now, we carry video-consuming devices in our pockets and bags, billboards have screens, and even gas station pumps have looping videos. Due to its access, we no longer seek out information; it is pumped into us.
After thinking about why the written word is dying, it is obvious, there is no incentive to cultivate it. Society has moved from an intentional, knowledge-seeking people, to a passively consuming one. Combining this culture with an impatient child or an overworked adult, they have little to no incentive to find information, never mind creating new. Coupling that with the friction that writing and reading incur, the obvious winner is video. People would rather ask the virtual assistant on a device to find that thing for them. They then click the first link recommended, as long as it's a video. Then peruse their preferred sources – TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. In recent years, Google has been limited to a portal to get to video. With the dawn of ChatGPT and other LLMs, Google isn't even needed.
The Impact
This culture has limited children's development and backpedaled most adults' creativity and curiosity.
Children cannot do the simple things – tell analog time, write in cursive, have a vocabulary equal to their age or better. Most children that I have conversed with in the past 10+ years have a vocabulary of half their age. They don't have books on their night table and they are awake all night scrolling. What they do excel in is syncing their dancing with a choreographed TikTok dance or lighting their bedroom perfectly for a tutorial or gaming session.
This is not limited to children. Adults are always seeking visual stimulation. Always needing a TV or phone screen on, to add noise to their days. Sitting on the couch until 2 am binge-watching the latest reality TV craze. And most detrimentally, being an example for young ones in their orbit. As a child, if your parents are quoting and referencing Instagram 20 times a day, rather than a major news publication, you're going to start to think that social media is an acceptable place to get information.
How Can We Cultivate the Written Word
To shift the tide towards the written medium, you simply have to do one thing – consume actively. Rather than keeping the TV on as background noise or propping up an iPad at the dinner table, be present. When the present moment passes and you are ready to consume information, do it with intention.
Don't listen to your news from a person in their basement in front of a green screen. Load up your preferred news publication and read current events. Curate your trusted sources, don't give your attention to reposts or algorithmic placement. If you still have problems with this, go analog – subscribe to a local or national publication.
When you are done with a long day or start your weekend, don't start it with your head text-necking over your phone. Grab a book, physical or digital, and curl up on your couch or under a tree. Normalize reading and actively consuming. Buy your kids an e-reader and set them an allowance for books.
Personally, when I switched to this concept years ago, I noticed an immediate change. I started to realize how tired I was. Without the constant stimulation of video, my body's circadian rhythm started to balance itself out. It was one of the key reasons why I no longer have insomnia. I also became more creative. My writing and deeper thinking skyrocketed. I had time to stew on the stories and journalism I was consuming before the next auto-playing video snatched my attention.
Doing these simple acts will help you slow down and think. It will teach the people around you how to do the same. It will give you something back that you forgot existed – choice. Active consumption and creation, in the form of reading and writing, is the biggest gift that society ever bestowed upon us. Foster it, don't squander it for another 15s of stimulation.