Skimming Culture

Skimming Culture

Once a laboriously built skill that demanded spending money, skimming today is what kids today are born with. Free. Skimming has sneaked into our DNA and quietly become a reflex, a default, it appears.

Under pressure - of time, volume, and information overload - we learn to extract rather than inhabit text. Headlines stand in for arguments. Summaries replace encounters. We move quickly, efficiently, and often forgetfully.

This style of reading is not entirely useless, of course. Skimming has its place. But when it becomes the dominant mode, it reshapes expectation. Dense paragraphs feel hostile. Ambiguity feels like friction. Anything that cannot be immediately extracted feels expendable. Books must be Burger King.

Over time, the mind adapts. We become better at scanning, and worse at staying. Reading loses its capacity to surprise or transform, because we no longer give it the conditions it needs to do so.