Losing Our Words: The Decline of Reading and the Rise of Reels

There’s a quiet crisis happening in our world today. It’s not new, but it’s growing—and it’s changing how we think, how we feel, and how we follow Jesus. It’s the slow decline of reading.

Fewer and fewer people are reading books, especially people in the younger generations. Attention spans are shrinking. Deep thought is giving way to scrolling. Words are being replaced by images, pages by pixels, and sentences by soundbites. For Christians and churches, this shift is more than just a cultural trend—it’s a spiritual concern.

A World That No Longer Reads

Studies show that reading rates have fallen sharply in the past decade. Many people struggle to finish even short articles, let alone a book. Even among students, fewer are cultivating the habit of sustained reading. The reasons aren’t hard to find. We live in a world of distraction—phones in our pockets, screens on our walls, notifications in our ears. Everything is designed to grab our attention for a moment and then move us on.

It’s not just that people don’t read books anymore; it’s that we don’t know how to read deeply. We skim, we scroll, we glance. Our minds, constantly fed on instant content, become restless and impatient with slow thought. The result is a generation that finds reading effortful—and reflection uncomfortable.

Why Reading Matters for Christians

But for Christians, reading isn’t (or shouldn’t be) just a hobby; it’s central to our faith. Ours is a revealed faith—a faith built on words, not images. God chose to speak, and those words were written down. The Bible is not a video reel or an infographic. It is a book—one that requires careful attention, time, and meditation.

The decline of reading, then, is not just a cultural problem; it’s a discipleship problem. If we are people of the Book, we must be people who read the Book. We cannot grow in the knowledge of God, in wisdom, or in discernment if our attention is too fractured to sit quietly with Scripture.

When reading declines, so does biblical literacy. Sermons become shallower because congregations can’t follow sustained argument. Devotions become thinner because minds can’t linger on truth. Our capacity to think in a Christlike way about the world diminishes because we’ve lost the mental discipline to wrestle with ideas. The Bible calls us to meditate on God’s Word day and night (Psalm 1:2). Meditation requires focus, patience, and stillness—all qualities that our digital world erodes.

The Rise of the Reel World

At the same time, something else has risen to take reading’s place: the world of short-form video. Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have reshaped how we consume information. Videos are short, flashy, and emotionally charged. They entertain and distract in equal measure. Algorithms learn what holds our gaze and feed us more of it. We are drawn in, trapped, and numbed.

There’s nothing inherently evil about video, of course. Visual media can communicate truth beautifully. But the form of these platforms—the endless scroll, the brevity, the stimulation—trains us to be passive and impulsive. We become consumers of feelings rather than seekers of truth. The Christian mind, meant to be renewed by the Word (Romans 12:2), becomes dulled by noise.

This constant diet of reels and clips affects us spiritually. It fragments our attention, making prayer harder and Scripture less appealing. It stirs envy, pride, and comparison. It fills our imaginations with trivial and temporary things. It makes us restless and shallow. And worst of all, it quietly displaces the time and space where God’s voice might be heard.

The Cost to the Church

Churches, too, feel the effects. Sermons must compete with screens for attention. Biblical teaching feels “too long” for ears trained by TikTok. Christians are tempted to prefer influencers to pastors, clips to sermons, feelings to truth. Some churches, fearing irrelevance, try to keep up—shorter messages, more visuals, less doctrine. But that only feeds the problem.

If the church loses its love for words, it loses its depth. If we stop reading, we stop thinking. If we stop thinking, we stop discerning. And when discernment fades, error creeps in easily. The enemy doesn’t always silence the Word; sometimes he just distracts us from it.

Recovering the Habit of Reading

So what can we do? Well one of the answers is simple but not easy: we must recover the habit of reading. Christians must become countercultural in this area—people who resist the pull of the scroll and return to the page. Parents should read with their children. Churches should encourage reading Scripture together, slowly and aloud. Pastors should commend good books, both old and new, that feed the soul and stretch the mind.

And each of us should take practical steps to reclaim attention: put down the phone, set aside time for reading, and ask God to renew our appetite for his Word. Start small—read a psalm before you open your apps. Read a few pages of a good Christian book each day. Let the joy of truth gradually replace the thrill of the feed.

A People of the Word

In every age, the church has been sustained by people who read—who love God’s Word enough to dwell in it deeply. The digital age tempts us to trade that for flickering images and fleeting moments. But we are called to something better. We are called to fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18). To love the Lord our God with all our minds (Matthew 22:37). To be people of the Word, in a world that no longer reads.

Let’s not lose our words. Because when we lose our words, we lose our way.