In 2004, about 28% of people read for fun daily; by 2025, that number dropped to just 16%. Yikes, imagine not having fun!

We live in an era of the 15-second hook. From TikTok scrolls to “X” threads, the information economy now trades in micro-moments. The traditional 3,000-word essay or the hour-long investigative documentary is increasingly competing with content designed to be consumed in the time it takes to tie your shoelaces. So no wonder reading for pleasure is seeing a drop, when we can get endless dopamine hits from scrolling on our devices.

September 23, 2025.

I’d had the date circled in my calendar for months; every other book I’d read that year felt like a warm-up lap for this. When Alchemised finally dropped, I lunged for it like a parched rabbit in a desert. (Do rabbits live in deserts? Let’s assume this one was very lost and very thirsty.)

Standing tall at over 1,000 pages, the book is a genuine masterpiece. But it did something to my brain, something that slammed the brakes on a record-breaking reading streak.

Up until that point, I was flying high, having cleared around 85 books since January. But post-September? I can shamefully admit I’ve managed exactly four. And “managed” is the operative word: it was a painful, sloggy experience. Somewhere between page 400 and 1,000 of that tome, my ability to focus simply evaporated. I don’t blame the book itself, but it was undoubtedly the pebble that triggered a landslide of reader’s burnout.

I went from being the person who could fully disconnect in the evenings (just me, a solid narrative, and a cup of raspberry water) to a person who reads two pages and feels an almost physical itch to reach for the endless scroll.

I’m slowly clawing my way out of the rut now, rebuilding the mental muscle required to reject the phone. But it’s made me wonder: if someone like me, who lives for long-form, can fall down the slope of scrolling fatigue so easily, what hope is there for the rest of the world? Can we counteract this “long-form fatigue” before our attention spans are permanently filed down into 15-second increments?

Why We’re Tuning Out

The “death” of long-form isn’t necessarily a failure of quality; it’s a shift in human architecture. We are being rewired, one swipe at a time, because any economy is ultimately just a place where demand marries supply.

To maximize profit, you need volume. It’s significantly easier to flood the market with “itsy-bitsy” pieces of content that refresh every thirty seconds than it is to invest in depth. Volume over value, baby!

But there’s a cynical math behind the “micro-hit” strategy: the more bits of content we consume, the more “ad real estate” we generate. If you spend twenty minutes reading a single, thoughtful chapter in a book, the tech giants make zero dollars. But if you spend those same twenty minutes scrolling through sixty different clips? That’s sixty opportunities to show you an ad, track your data, and sell your attention to the highest bidder.

We aren’t just losing our focus; we’re being mined for it. Our attention spans are being chopped into tiny, bite-sized pieces because those pieces are easier to monetise. In the eyes of the algorithm, a 1,000-page masterpiece is a “dead zone” for revenue. The “endless scroll” isn’t just a design choice: it’s a high-speed assembly line, with us a the product moving down the line.

And it’s easy to see why the “micro-hit” wins. Short-form content provides instant gratification. Every swipe is a new variable reward: a little hit of digital dopamine. Compared to that, the slow build of a 1,000-page book or a deep-dive essay starts to feel like “work.” Even the algorithms are rooting against the long-form; platforms prioritise high completion rates, and it is statistically a cakewalk to get someone to finish a 30-second video compared to a 20-minute read. So, the deep stuff gets buried, and the fluff rises to the top.

But what does this have to do with the books on our nightstands?

Well, focus is a muscle, and practice makes perfect. If our day-to-day existence consists of being bombarded by “chocolate kiss-sized” information, we are effectively training our brains to expect content that requires zero effort to digest. When we spend ten hours a day grazing on easy-access snacks, of course, we’re going to feel a sense of dread when we open a “stuffy” tome. Our brains have forgotten how to sit down for a full meal.

We’ve moved into “skimming mode” as a survival mechanism to process the sheer volume of data hitting our eyes. But you can’t skim your way through a masterpiece. Skimming is a defence against noise; deep reading is an immersion in signal. When you try to apply the “skimming” habit to ten thousand words of nuance, the gears start to grind. The experience becomes frustrating, and eventually, we just… stop.

The Cost of Brevity

Long-form is, well, long. It occupies physical and mental space, space that acts as a reservoir for detail, nuance, and context. It’s in that space that a meaningful connection between the reader and the author is actually forged.

The reality is that complex issues cannot be solved in a caption. Short-form content is built to polarise because it simply lacks the room for an “on the other hand.” Sure, that’s all fine and dandy for “engagement”; a black-and-white take is far more likely to spark a firestorm in the comments than a measured analysis. But we have to ask: isn’t there a better way to get people talking than feeding them literary snippets of blood-pressure enhancers?

I’m at an age where I’ve watched the birth and evolution of rage-bait. I’ve seen it grow from sensationalist newspaper headlines to snappy, neon text flashing on a Reel. The formula is simple: make them feel something (usually something negative) from the get-go, and you’ll keep them talking.

The tragedy is that this ignores the mountain of details that make a situation human. Complexity requires empathy; it requires us to slow down enough to understand a perspective that isn’t our own. We’ve reached a point where a two-sentence caption allows us to notice someone’s shoes have a hole in them and immediately refuse to walk a mile in them. Instead of trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes, we’re trained to judge the “low-res” version of them and move on to the next scroll.

The Counter-Rebellion: Is Long-Form Actually Dying?

While the average attention span may be dropping, a counter-trend is emerging. The massive success of three-hour podcasts and four-hour video essays suggests that long-form isn’t actually dead, it’s just becoming premium.

We are seeing what’s known as a “barbell effect.” On one end, you have the 15-second dopamine hit; on the other, the 2-hour deep dive. The middle ground, the 800-word fluff piece or the mediocre “listicle”, is disappearing entirely. People no longer want “medium.” They want either the quick update or the total immersion.

This is where the book finds its new, strange power.

In a world of fragments, a book is the ultimate “premium” experience. When I picked up Alchemised, I wasn’t just looking for a story; I was looking for a sanctuary from the noise. The statistics back this up: while fewer people are reading overall, those who do read are reading more than ever. We are splitting into a world of “Information Grazers” and “Deep Divers.”

The problem I hit in September wasn’t that I didn’t want the depth; it was that the “barbell” had become too heavy. I had spent so much time in the 15-second “snack” zone that jumping back into a 1,000-page “feast” felt like trying to run a marathon after a month of sitting on the couch.

Books are becoming the high-end destination for our attention. They are the counter-rebellion against the scroll. But to enjoy them, we have to admit that the middle ground is gone. You can’t “sort of” read a masterpiece while your phone is buzzing in your pocket; you have to choose which end of the barbell you’re going to lift.

Conclusion: Quality Over Quantity

Long-form content isn’t going to vanish, but its role is changing. It is no longer our default setting; it has become a destination. In a world of digital white noise, the ability to sit with a single idea for an hour isn’t just a hobby anymore, it’s becoming a superpower.

But there is a challenge in claiming that power. As I start this blog in 2026, I’m acutely aware that I’m stepping right into the “dead zone” of that barbell I mentioned earlier. Blogs often live in that treacherous middle ground: longer than a caption, shorter than a tome; the exact space where attention tends to drop off the cliff.

Launching a long-form space today feels a bit like opening a slow-food restaurant in the middle of a Formula 1 track. Everything around us is screaming for us to go faster, to skim more, to react quicker. By choosing to write here, and by you choosing to read this, we are effectively staging a small sit-in against the algorithm.

My “September Slump” taught me that focus isn’t a gift you either have or you don’t; it’s a muscle that can atrophy if you feed it nothing but 15-second “chocolate kisses.” Rebuilding that muscle starts with reclaiming the middle ground. It starts with a few hundred words, a cup of raspberry water, and the conscious choice to let the phone vibrate in the other room.

We may be headed toward a future of “Information Grazers,” but the depth is still there for those willing to trek to it.

Long-form isn’t dead. It’s just waiting for us to stop scrolling long enough to find it.