Asklemmy

44149 readers

1447 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

722

Has anyone else noticed a sudden lack of reading comprehension skills? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by ThatWeirdGuy1001@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

462 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just as the title asks I've noticed a very sharp increase in people just straight up not comprehending what they're reading.

They'll read it and despite all the information being there, if it's even slightly out of line from the most straightforward sentence structure, they act like it's complete gibberish or indecipherable.

Has anyone else noticed this? Because honestly it's making me lose my fucking mind.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] JackiesFridge@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One of my tasks at work is creating content - blogs, social media posts, internal communication emails, etc. We are instructed to write everything at a 5th-grade level because that's where the average American reads. Not the lowest-level American, the average.

I also get to do customer support for people who would not have to contact me if they had actually read the information I wrote for them.

[–] agertudici@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'm a nurse and we were taught to educate patients at the fifth grade level as well. Believe it or not, the sex ed level is even lower! The average American seems to struggle with such topics as "it's bad to touch or be touched when the person being touched doesn't like it" and "don't put random household objects in your butthole."

[–] JackiesFridge@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

johnconnor.gif: "We're not gonna make it, are we? Humanity I mean."

[–] blackluster117@possumpat.io 1 points 1 year ago

Instructions unclear, my colon has an amazing idea according to my x-ray tech.

[–] Anonymouse@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know if it's at a 5th grade level, but the XKCD comic has an editor that flags words that are not in the top 500 most used words. The author used it in a few comics to explain complicated things in "plain English".

[–] JackiesFridge@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I'd say that would be useful, but using it would be depressing so it sounds like a double-edged sword.