Approximately two years ago, a bizarre new genre of AI-generated content began to emerge online. Suddenly social media was filled with short-form videos depicting hypersexual anthropomorphic fruit, embroiled in increasingly far-fetched and soapy plot lines. In one video, a voluptuous strawberry cheats on her watermelon husband, and gives birth to two wolf cubs. In another, an emasculated orange takes revenge on a womanizing banana who has stolen his girlfriend. In a particularly violent iteration, a young tangerine is bullied by his homophobic father and ends up juicing his whole family.

It is easy to dismiss these shlocky and incoherent narratives as mere “AI slop.” But they are also endemic to a broader culture. In 2026, the average American spends at least two hours a day doomscrolling — significantly more time than Asians and Europeans, whose social media use is in decline. On their phones, shirtless celebrities, videos of bears chasing cyclists, or children buried under the rubble of their family home are all part of an undifferentiated stream. Faced with this endless churn of content, the human attention span has become increasingly fragmented. Our ability to register nuance and complexity has also taken a hit. So it is that millions find themselves engaging with mindless dross from Baby Shark for toddlers to Fruit Love Island for adults.

What, one might ask, is the cost of this new form of consumption? The answer, argues British journalist James Marriott in The New Dark Ages, is human literacy. Marriott describes his book as an “impassioned attack on the trivial and meaningless culture of the screen and a defence of the written word.” There can be no doubt that Marriott has picked a hot-button topic. Evidence of declining literacy rates is stark. In 2004, almost 30 percent of Americans read for pleasure; by 2023, that figure had fallen to just 16 percent. Books are getting shorter, comprehension of long words is in decline, and many young people now source their politics from TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.