postliteracy

plural postliteracies · alternative post-literacy

1. countableuncountableThe decline of literacy.

   Postliteracy won’t replace reason with madness, but it might give us madness of a new and different type.

   2026 March 19, Sam Kriss, “Politics After Literacy”, in Jacobin

   3 more examples

   The conventional wisdom is that the American public has lost faith in the humanities—and lost both competence and interest in reading and writing, possibly heralding a post-literacy age.

   2024 October 23, Tyler Austin Harper, “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have to Ruin College”, in The Atlantic

   Pundits—responding to the rise of streaming, AI, climate change, and Trump himself—have announced the dawn of post-literacy, post-humanism, and post-neoliberalism.

   2025 February 12, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Game That Shows We’re Thinking About History All Wrong”, in The Atlantic, retrieved 12 Apr 2026

   There are studies showing that our video consumption has ushered in this age of post-literacy. Gen Z now overwhelmingly prefers to consume visual content on YouTube as opposed to traditional media, and that has tracked with a drop in reading levels, attention spans.

   2026 March 28, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “What Is YouTube’s Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its C.E.O.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN