Can confirm, English teacher friends report that reading ability is dropping with each year and is now so bad they’re concerned about the survival of literate society, period. “Advanced” kids struggle with books that were considered normal for their age in the 80s or 90s. Compound sentences are exactly part of the problem these teachers have highlighted—the kids can’t keep enough context in their heads to track what’s going on through multiple clauses, even the simple sort that were common in writing for kids within the last 50 years.
And I really do think we'll just give up on the idea of literacy being required in society as that generation grows up. Fixing it would be too much work and cost too much money/time, and would be incompatible with current American social values. I also genuinely do think a lot of Boomers and Gen X have mild lead poisoning, so our elders are probably also going to struggle more the older they get. (Who knows, maybe the microplastics are also eating the contextual reasoning parts of our brains and we'll have the same problem.) So if 80% of society isn't functionally literate, functional literacy will go away as an information requirement for the average citizen.
I wouldn't be shocked if literacy becomes a college level skill that's only taught until students stop having to consult sources/teaching materials from before the 2010s/2020s. There will be a few exceptions, like the historians, but eventually literacy is going to be seen as an eccentric skill that used to be a sign of culture but is no longer relevant. (As an example, my basic knowledge of Latin would be very impressive in a lot of historical periods but in 2024 America it's just a weird personal quirk.)
