There is a particular kind of danger that does not arrive with force. It settles in quietly through normalization, embedding itself in the everyday habits of how we read, how we respond, and how we come to make meaning. What begins as convenience gradually becomes expectation. Close reading, critical questioning, and sustained reflection are replaced by something far more passive.
This shift is easy to overlook because it does not feel like a loss. It feels like efficiency. It feels like access. It feels like progress. Yet something more foundational is being lost. The capacity to sit with complexity, to wrestle with ideas that resist easy answers, and to question what is placed in front of us. Independent thought does not disappear all at once. It erodes. Often quietly. Often unnoticed.
In revisiting 1984 by George Orwell, we are reminded that the most enduring forms of control are not rooted only in surveillance or overt authority. They are sustained through the structuring of language and the narrowing of thought. Through “newspeak,” Orwell presents a world in which language is reduced so that certain ideas cannot be fully formed. The limitation is not simply in what people are allowed to say. It is in what they are able to think.
In working alongside educators and young people, the pattern becomes difficult to ignore. Students have more access to information than any generation before them. The issue is not access. The issue is whether they are being supported in developing the capacity to remain with information long enough to make sense of it. To question it. To challenge it. To connect it to a broader understanding of the world.
I think back to a classroom about five years ago while teaching African American History. A prompt asked students to respond to a question:
“Please discuss and describe how there existed historical affirmative action for white people in America. Use at least three examples to support your position, proving systematic exclusion of African Americans and the benefits extended to white Americans within a racialized system.”
A student submitted an essay that checked every box. Clear thesis. Structured paragraphs. References to policies that aligned with the question. The argument was present on the page. During discussion, I asked a follow-up question. Which of those examples do you think still shapes people’s lives today?
There was a pause. The student looked down, then up toward the ceiling, then back at the screen as if the answer might still be there. One hand pulled slightly at the sleeve of their sweatshirt. The response that followed repeated the structure of the essay, but it did not extend beyond it. The language was intact. The thinking had not yet moved. It was not that the student had nothing to say. It was that the ideas had not fully taken hold. That moment has stayed with me. Because it was not isolated.
Even before that, during the transition to one-to-one classrooms with Chromebooks, I began to notice a similar pattern. Students could locate information quickly. They could assemble responses efficiently. But when asked to recall ideas from previous lessons, to build on prior discussions, or to connect concepts across time, there was often a gap.
The work had been completed, but it had not settled into memory or understanding. What we are seeing now with artificial intelligence is not entirely new, but it is an acceleration. Literacy, in this sense, is not simply a skill. It is a disciplined practice. It is closer to training than it is to completion. And like any form of training, it does not hold if it is not exercised.
We now exist in a context where individuals encounter an overwhelming volume of text each day and still struggle to comprehend, analyze, or retain what they have read. On phones, in passing, between moments that already feel divided, we scroll, react, and move on. Language becomes compressed into headlines, captions, and phrases designed to provoke immediate response. Reading becomes less about reflection and more about alignment with what already feels familiar. A quick agreement. A dismissal. A signal of where one stands. This creates a contradiction.
We are surrounded by information, yet increasingly disconnected from meaning. Deep reading, the kind that engages argumentation, nuance, metaphor, and ambiguity, is no longer consistently practiced. Fragmented attention takes its place. Over time, complexity begins to feel like something to move past rather than something to work through.
It is within this gap, between literacy as a technical ability and literacy as an intellectual and cultural practice, that vulnerability begins to take shape. When comprehension weakens, simplicity becomes more appealing. Language shifts accordingly. Ideas are condensed into phrases that require little interpretation. They function as signals rather than arguments. They do not ask you to think. They ask you to take a side.
If a democracy depends on an informed public, then literacy must be understood as a civic condition. The ability to weigh evidence, engage multiple perspectives, and participate in reasoned dialogue is not secondary to civic life. It is foundational. These capacities are developed through sustained engagement with text, through writing that requires clarity, and through conversations that require individuals to listen, respond, and reconsider. Artificial intelligence adds another layer to this reality. Used intentionally, it can support learning in meaningful ways. I have seen students use it to generate competing interpretations of a historical question and then evaluate which one is more convincing, pushing their thinking further than they might have on their own.
But I have also seen the opposite. Students rely on it to summarize, interpret, and generate responses without fully engaging in the thinking those tasks were designed to develop. We might be underestimating the long-term cost. Some emerging research points in this direction. Michael Gerlich’s 2025 study found a negative relationship between heavy AI reliance and analytical engagement, often tied to cognitive offloading.
Work from the MIT Media Lab has also suggested reduced brain engagement during writing tasks when AI tools are used, along with lower recall and a diminished sense of ownership over the ideas produced. The research is still developing, but the pattern aligns with what I observe daily. What appears as fluency can become a form of intellectual outsourcing. And over time, outsourcing becomes habit.
The parallel to Newspeak is instructive. The concern is not that language is being forcibly reduced. The concern is that our engagement with language is becoming reduced through habit. When individuals are no longer required to wrestle with complex text, to sit with ambiguity, or to work through contradiction, the range of thought begins to narrow. Not because it has been taken, but because it has not been practiced. And what is not practiced cannot be relied upon when it is most needed.
The deeper concern is not technology itself. It is the possibility that, without intention, we allow systems designed for speed, engagement, and profit to shape habits that diminish our capacity to think critically. In that context, distraction is not incidental. It is structural. Which raises a harder question. If the conditions around us are organized in ways that fragment attention, is individual discipline enough?
A society that loses the habit of deep reading becomes more susceptible to language that prioritizes emotion over evidence and certainty over understanding. In that context, power does not need to restrict thought. It only needs to operate where thought is no longer fully exercised. The warning found in 1984 is not confined to fiction. It speaks to what becomes possible when individuals lose the tools to name, analyze, and challenge the world around them. Those tools have not been taken. They remain within reach. The question is whether we will continue to use them before their absence becomes normal.
Years later, I think about that same student. In a different conversation, responding to a current issue connected to inequality and policy. The response comes more quickly this time. More certain. But I find myself listening for something else. Not just what is being said, but whether there is space behind it. Whether the thinking is unfolding, or whether it has settled into something already formed.
I am still listening for whether true thinking is unfolding.
“If a democracy depends on an informed public, then literacy must be understood as a civic condition.”
This is so timely and important.