I have been thinking about this exact point. When I was a kid, I went through a short(200 pages or so) sci-fi read every week. I read all of them before the publisher could publish more of that series, so I went to another series and another. I read many non-fiction books and tried things out to cement the learning.

I think the common experience is becoming one of instant gratification, why read a book when you can look up the answer? why read a book when you can google a summary, and so on.

I am very happy to have been able to start reversing this, it started with killing wifi at home so I can’t really check email on my tablet or wonder off to the web. The other things which helped, is finding really interesting reads! I think our interest in reading and the quality of publications both devolved at the same rate. The “news” almost sound like paid ads! When was the last time you read an opinion piece that really got you thinking or reflecting on something meaningful.

What would be interesting to investigate is to gauge whether or not our sensory system and brain had adapted to the rate of information flow. whether we are able to filter out things that matter very fast and therefore most of our reading become skimming? I think this maybe the case when reading the “news” but I believe any thought provoking article now genuinely represents a challenge for the average intellectual person