Kenneth Glad
Most people rely on automated tech to make daily life run a little smoother. From predictive texts to auto-generated audio summaries, software does most of the heavy lifting for our thumbs and brains. Still, that frictionless convenience might come at a steep price, especially when looking at the online chatter that fills our daily screens.
In an outspoken social media critique on Facebook, author Mikkel Wendelboe argues that basic literacy is facing a quiet collapse. Handing our daily thinking over to algorithms is tempting. But as people walk away from regular reading and writing, basic comprehension takes a beating across every digital space.
Wendelboe pointed to the famous bean soup problem to explain how bad things have become online. Imagine watching a video recipe for bean soup and flying into an immediate rage simply because you dislike beans. Instead of scrolling past, angry viewers demand a rewrite. They expect the creator to change the recipe just to please them.
This sense of personal grievance is spreading into every corner of the internet. Creators now add disclaimers to basic posts just to dodge angry mobs. If a message does not cater to an individual directly, they treat it as an insult. No one moves on.
Literal thinking makes the problem worse. Obvious jokes fly right over people’s heads, leaving readers confused and furious. Comedians make playful remarks on stage, only to find audiences reacting with pure, humorless outrage. Every quip becomes a personal attack.
Trapped in extremes
Subtext suffers just as badly. Without strong reading habits, people cannot track subtle clues, underlying context, or implied meaning. They miss the bigger picture completely, stumbling blindly through basic conversations. It leaves them unable to read between the lines.
That confusion quickly leads to wild conclusions. When readers cannot decode a situation, they invent their own reality to fill the gap. A harmless comment gets twisted into a deliberate attack, and suddenly people are ready to defend bizarre falsehoods at all costs. Conspiracies thrive in that darkness.
Black-and-white thinking rushes into the void. Complex ideas get boiled down to good or evil, right or wrong, writes Wendelboe. Life turns into an endless fight where a minor inconvenience at the store feels like an act of war, leaving no room for middle ground. Compromise becomes completely impossible.
Everyday encounters end up warped by this lack of perspective. A pleasant interaction with a stranger gets mistaken for eternal love. Meanwhile, a mild disagreement creates an enemy for life. Without the patience to understand context, modern life turns into a minefield of overreactions.
Breaking the habit
Social media feeds reward this shallow mindset. Isolated clips and blurry screenshots get treated as undeniable proof of vast plots. Very few users stop to ask who recorded the footage, why it was posted, or what was cut out before it hit their screens. Skepticism simply vanishes.
Curiosity takes the deepest hit of all. When struggling readers meet an idea they do not recognize, they no longer ask questions. Instead, they blame the material itself. They demand that complex ideas be ground down into tiny, effortless bites that require zero work to swallow.
That intellectual surrender creates a dangerous cycle. People dismiss anything that requires a second glance or a dictionary search, branding unfamiliar thoughts as errors made by the writer. When individuals stop challenging themselves, critical thinking withers away. The mind grows sluggish.
Big tech firms are eager to sell those lost skills back through paid monthly subscriptions. Wendelboe insists that the real solution is much simpler and far cheaper. Put down the dictation microphones, step away from the automated tools, and read actual books to keep human thinking sharp. Our future depends on it.
