There are multiple layers to illiteracy, a very hot topic among (pseudo)intellectual TikTok content creators, and rightfully so. The traditional use of the term refers to the ability to read and write. And while modern society has done literal wonders in raising literacy across the world, in the Digital Age we are now faced with – not necessarily the new problem of, but at least a new scale of – functional illiteracy. A layer above simply being able to read which refers to understanding what we read. Functional illiteracy has in itself, I will try to argue next, some layers and nuances. As a note, when we talk about a “text” we do not necessarily mean a written text, but any piece of media which requires interpretation.
First, while they can read just fine, there are people who have trouble parsing even the literal sense of a text. This usually happens due to lack of proper understanding of the larger context around the text, misinterpreting its message, partially or erroneously decoding it, or not correctly determining who the intended audience is. This is best illustrated in the comment section of any social media platform. People are constantly unable to generalize away from their specific circumstances, abstract the concept behind an example, rather than focus on its particularities, identify who the text is intended for or correctly decode what it is trying to achieve. We have on our hands an epidemic of “ah, actually” comments coming from individuals who almost never consider that more than one thing can be true at a time or that a critique of something does not causally imply an endorsement of something else, but can stand as is. And the list can go on. This is how we are now drowning in online discourse with little or no connection between utterances.
Second, and more importantly, there is the layer which people usually refer to when talking about issues concerning media literacy: one’s inability to understand what a text is about beyond its literal sense. This is dealing with readers who do not understand metaphors, symbols, allegory, or the references the text is making. They cannot “read between the lines” nor imagine how to fill the gaps which were intentionally left there, or maybe only vaguely treated by the author. Things like Marvel movies or the SciFi/fantasy books heavily promoted on TikTok have only one dimension to them: the entertainment value of the plot. Their sole purpose is to make the reader passively partake to the narrative. While enjoyable, such media is intelectual kitsch and should not become anyone’s entire diet. A counter-balance is needed comprising actual art, the very active engagement of thinking about questions, ideas, and symbols in good film and literature. This is, of course, just one side of an immensely complex issue. One ought not to neglect the effect that our neoliberal capitalist world order has had on education – especially higher education. Ever since the advent of industrialism, education focused more and more on what we now call STEM (science, tehcnology, engineering, math) and left the humanities to a certain “second rate citizen” quality. This has naturally been turbocharged in the recent years by the ever increasing popularity of software and computer science. This very piece was authored by someone who, having completed a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in linguistics, was pushed towards computer science by the job market. The capitalist order requires engineers, people who can work in the continuous research, development, and maintenance of new technology meant to perpetuate it. Not only does it not need thinkers, it actively discourages them out of existence. We must also consider the changes plagued upon our brains by social media. With the focus on photos and videos in the detriment of text and attention-destroying short form content, the recommendation algorithms that have come to run our digital lives have an important hand to play in the rise of functional illiteracy. We are deprived of nuance, time to ponder, or the complex discussions needed for the development of critical thinking skills.
I believe this is the foundational infrastructure from which the issues with media literacy come from. In literary theory we do deal with concepts such as “reader response” and no contemporary critic or academic any longer believes that the act of literary interpretation has to produce a single, “correct” reading of a text, in a positivist fashion. There are multiple possible and sometimes equally valid interpretations or ways of reading according to many different literary theories. Media literacy is not about producing a certain type of hermeneutics, but about the ability to produce a single interpretation of the plot which can be argued for with evidence present in the text (the existence of multiple possible readings does not mean that any text can mean anything). Media illiteracy is, like mentioned above, not seeing anything more than the plot itself. It talks about the right-wing young men who love Star Wars because it depicts spaceship battles and lightsabers between wizards, but do not realize that at least the original six films are a deeply political story about the fall of democracy and the fight against authoritarianism. From the plurality of the aliens to the minority rebels engaged in guerilla warfare against the tyrannial status quo, Star Wars is inherently incompatbile with right-wing values (even more so now, in 2026, when the Trump’s Administration Guestapo-like ICE started killing American citizens). We are slowly but surely losing our ability to think critically and read properly.
There are no prescriptive elements I want to include in this anti-conclusion. What is up to us are individual solutions which most likely do not apply to people taking their time to read a piece on functional illiteracy in the first place. However, hope is springing on the horizon. More and more (young) people are starting to notice and talk about these phenomena. There is an increase in social media content advocating for and making an aesthetic out of returing to more analog ways of doing things, using technology more intentionally, going back to retro video games and physical media, or abandoing doomscrolling – albeit this is still on social media, but it is a respectable start.
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