Why Gen Z Might Be the Last Literate Generation.

Here’s the kicker: you think you’re ‘engaged’ when you’re doom-scrolling through your feed at 2 a.m.? News flash: that’s not focused attention—that’s "rote activity". William James, the 19th-century brainiac, mapped it out: real engagement—where you’re challenged and actually flexing those neurons—happens in late morning and again around 2–3 p.m. Rote activity? That’s your entire day glued to games, TikTok, and headlines—zero challenge, yet you’re convinced you’re ‘busy.’ So while you’re numbing your brain with mindless swipes, your focus is slipping through your fingers—attention is currency . Congratulations, "Screen Zombie.” Today, our heroes are influencers, their wisdom condensed into 15-second clips. Now, you can barely finish a tweet without checking your notifications. Your brain craves the next dopamine hit—a like, a share, a viral video. Deep reading? That's ancient history.The attention economy has commodified our focus. Every ping, every alert, a bid for our most precious resource: our attention. And we've sold it cheap. In this landscape, deep reading is a rebellion. Choosing a book over a feed is an act of defiance. It's a step towards reclaiming our minds, our leadership, our humanity.The average attention span has dramatically decreased, with studies showing a drop from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to just 47 seconds today. The abundance of information has led to a scarcity of attention, making focused leadership and clear communication more critical than ever.I’m not bitter. I’m just... aware. Aware that we’ve replaced depth with immediacy, contemplation with scrolling. And I can’t help but wonder: when did we stop reading? When did we stop leading?”—we are going broke, our Greatest currency is being depleted. We used to have Geniuses The ever lingering thought I've always had. You know, people like Newton, who stared at apples instead of screens—Einstein devoured Mach’s works and Poincaré’s papers long before he scribbled E=mc²; Da Vinci filled notebooks with anatomical studies and translations of Vitruvius, not hashtags. They built ideas from the ground up, page by page, because reading wasn’t a pastime, it was their laboratory.These icons weren’t born with genius—they forged it through relentless reading. Each page stretched their imaginations, each footnote sharpened their curiosity. Contrast that with today: you call yourself “informed” because you skim a half-dozen tweets before breakfast.Take Winston Churchill: at every front he carried volumes of Shakespeare and Xenophon into the trenches. He believed that a battleground without books was a mind without defense. Even conquerors like Alexander the Great credited Aristotle’s lectures for shaping his strategy; Genghis Khan’s generals studied Chinese chronicles to streamline governance; Nelson Mandela secretly read banned texts in prison, and his literary arsenal helped reshape a nation. It wasn’t about showing off a library—it was about harnessing knowledge as a weapon.So yes, call me bitter: while a genius toil meant nights buried under heavy tomes, our greatest achievement is a trending GIF. We’ve swapped Polymaths for influencers, sweat for swipes. If you think that’s progress, keep scrolling—just don’t expect your brain to grow in the meantime.  Modern problems requires modern solutionBut despair isn’t the point—modern problems require modern solutions. You’ve been trained to consume: endless feeds, bite-sized hot takes, and algorithmic distractions. Fine. Let’s flip the script. Let our post join the algorithm, let's rot the brain of the gullible with our contents—if you can't beat them join them.You love Reels for the slick edits, pause and think: “How does my video get that perfectly catchy text overlay? What’s the initial picture that tells me this is ‘must-see’—oh, I googled it and it’s called a thumbnail.”Suddenly, you’re not just swiping mindlessly; you’re dissecting the recipe. You’re Googling “best thumbnail fonts,” you’re studying why that one color palette made someone’s engagement skyrocket. You’re learning tools like CapCut or InShot, fumbling through keyframes until you actually understand what “keyframe” means. Before you know it, you’re spending your ‘me time’ researching—not because school forced you, but because you’re genuinely curious how these tiny pieces fit together. That’s the seed of innovation.While the gullible masses scroll into oblivion, you’re reverse-engineering the very engines that keep them hypnotized. You’ll learn that on TikTok, the first three seconds decide your fate—get that hook wrong, and you’re roadkill on the For You page. On Instagram, deciphering the algorithm means figuring out which combination of hashtags and post times trigger that sweet little boost to 10,000 accounts. You’ll start tracking analytics—watching how engagement graphs curve like a heartbeat, feeling the same rush you used to get when you finished a chapter in a Tolstoy novel. This isn’t about abandoning pleasure. It’s about hijacking the very machines built to distract you, forcing them to work for your curiosity. Suddenly, you’re not a mindless consumer—you’re a digital artisan building narratives, editing visuals, crafting code snippets that might actually mean something. You’re discovering CSS, JavaScript, or whatever framework the next generation of creators swears by. You’re poking around APIs to see how data flows, how trends emerge, and—if you’re really ambitious—how you might bend that flow in your favor. The algorithm wants your eyeballs—well, this time not yours, but others, their attention becomes your currency. Go ahead—make that video. Write that thread. Code that mini-app. And remember: modern problems require modern solutions. Deep reading forged Newton and Einstein; deep tinkering will forge you. Now get out there and build something they can’t just scroll past.

Other insights from Matthew Okadinya