this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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I don't doubt that reading comprehension is down, but part of the article tries to coincide with chatgpt use and college students. Chatgpt is not old enough to impact a college level students reading level down to a 10 year old level.
These are also the kids who were entering their teens right as Covid hit. Chat GPT just happens to be the crutch some of these kids are leaning on.
Yeah I think covid might have had a much bigger impact on these students than AI.
All due respect, that's wild conjecture without some sort of reference for the claim. 🙇🏼♂️ I mean, in the same vein, I've interacted with a number of college students in a classroom setting over the last decade+, and that experience'd imply that it's quite the opposite.
Are you suggesting that collage-age people who had better than 10-year-old-level reading skills a few years ago before ChatGPT existed have since regressed?
That's a stretch by any measure. Besides, how old is "collage-age", anyhow?
p.s. Longtime fan, and I gotta say: your online persona's living up to the legacy.
~~You're the one who interacted with college level students. Shouldn't you know what's the average college students' age? This feels like you're moving the goal posts.~~
EDIT : I misunderstood their comment.
😶 ~fucksake~
I was poking at a misspelling.
Breathe.
Aw man I misunderstood. My apologies.
"Collage-age" is anything from toddler on up (basically, anybody with enough dexterity to glue macaroni to construction paper).
College-age, which is what I meant before I made that embarrassing typo 🤦, is generally 18 and up except for people in joint enrollment or who graduated high school early (which I would say implies that they're high-achieving enough that their literacy shouldn't be in question).
How is it "a stretch by any measure" to say that people who are at least 18 now, and who therefore were at least 15 when ChatGPT came out three years ago, should've already had a better than 10-year-old reading level by that age and would therefore have had to have regressed in order to have a 10-year-old reading level now?
Jokes aside, of I hadn't experienced teaching that age group before said brainsuck, how would I have any semblance of a control group? 🤷🏼♂️ You're arguing against tested anecdotal data? Hot take.
You haven’t made any claims at all, you’re just expressing that you think the other poster is wrong but not giving a reason. What have you observed?
The fact that I mentioned it was implying that the original notion was just as ridiculous. Does that clear things up?
So your stance is “nuh uh”? Thanks for the valuable input I guess. Definitely going to take that into account.
The fact that you're doubling down on this could imply you're one of 'em, NGL. Read a book, kiddo. Then another. Don't stop until you've discovered why, and then repeat.
It would be interesting to quantify how fast a skill like reading can degrade (or can degrade at all).
In that sense, ChatGPT could effectively affect the reading comprehension if the users ask the LLM to dumb down the response for example.
I think the point is that 10 year olds using chatGPT are coming off as college students, no?