Dagbladet Information published an essay on September 10 arguing that Denmark is moving toward a post-alphabetical society, where short video is replacing text. The piece follows this week’s PISA results on reading among 15-year-olds.
The essay, written by Mathias Sindberg, appeared on information.dk under the headline “Farvel til bøgerne”. It states that the new PISA survey concluded that Danish schoolchildren read worse than ever before.
Information notes that TV 2 on Tuesday interviewed a 15-year-old efterskole student about the findings. The student said he had grown used to short videos on his phone, where something new happens constantly.
Per Information, the results have set off a wide debate about causes. Svend Brinkmann points to the school reform, while Rasmus Meyer of the Trivselskommissionen points to lax upbringing. Jimmy Åkesson of Sverigedemokraterna blamed immigration for Sweden’s similar results.
The essay argues that the decline is not limited to children. It cites a large OECD study from 2024, which found that adult reading skills had fallen or stagnated in most countries. Denmark was an exception, with roughly stable results, as was the share of Danes reading fiction.
According to the same essay, Americans spend 40 percent less time reading for pleasure. In the United Kingdom, one in three adults has given up books entirely.
From text to video
Information draws on an essay in The Atlantic from August 2026, titled The End of Reading Is Here. As reported there, Margaret Rennix of Harvard says many students now see reading as an unnecessarily laborious way to acquire knowledge.
The essay also points to politics. Dansk Folkeparti now employs twice as many staff in digital communication as in policy development, and parties across the spectrum put more effort into short videos than into op-eds. On election night in March, the young TikToker Frede Dyrnesli drew crowds of politicians at Christiansborg, while established reporters struggled for quotes. Danish politicians on TikTok have become a fixture of campaigns.
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On screen habits, Information refers to a survey published last year by Norlys. It found that the average Dane spends 4.4 hours of leisure time on a screen every day, not only children and young people.
The essay recalls reporting in Berlingske in 2024, when professor Johnny Kondrup said he had stopped asking students at the University of Copenhagen to read Pelle Erobreren. He described the students who still love reading as a small, unusual group. Schools have responded to weak literacy results in various ways.
British author James Marriott, who wrote The New Dark Ages, is cited on the cause. As stated by Marriott earlier this year, the spread of the smartphone in developed countries in the mid-2010s was the turning point.
Information writes that books, sentences and words are generally getting shorter. It also notes that in the United States, 20 percent of readers account for more than 80 percent of all books read.
