What does literacy look like in a world shaped by TikTok, AI, and constant streams of information? In these two thought-provoking blogs, students Haley Starner and Brandon Edelin from Central York High School, PA, explore how technology is transforming the way we read, interpret, and engage with the world around us. Haley examines the rise of BookTok and the ways social media has created new communities of young readers, while Brandon considers how the digital age has expanded the meaning of literacy and challenged us to become more critical consumers of information.
All Things BookTok
There’s a reason why Barnes & Noble tends to still be packed with people browsing for books on a Saturday afternoon. Reading is not obsolete. Neither is literacy. In fact, in the 21st century, reading is becoming an increasingly significant part of culture as we know it. Among teenagers and young adults, social media shapes the way they view the world. When reading surfaced on TikTok in 2020, it created a community of readers that extended the depth of literacy far beyond the limits we ever thought were possible.
As an 18-year-old girl living in the age of social media, it seems that many people still believe that getting cozy with a book on the couch is outdated and that society has moved on to more advanced technology. However, social media did not make reading go extinct. Instead, it reshaped the way teens and young adults viewed it. Social media modernized the world of reading and brought authors, illustrators, editors, and readers together in a way that wasn’t possible before. We now see authors releasing sneak peeks of books through creative videos and readers debating favorite characters in comment sections. In fact, I’ve personally seen many bookstores have a table labeled “#BookTok” featuring all of social media’s favorite books.
So, what is BookTok? In order to understand what BookTok is, we need to first look into the social media app TikTok. TikTok is an app where creators can post short clips set to music. Most videos on TikTok are between fifteen and sixty seconds. Viewers can comment, like, and share videos. It functions like many other social media platforms, where an algorithm creates a feed for you based on content you’ve watched. So, Books + TikTok = BookTok. BookTok is simply the community of creators and viewers who watch and create content focused on reading.
Now that we know what BookTok is, we can look into how it is reshaping reading in the 21st century. BookTok is a perfect example of how social media can spread awareness about a topic. It is often used for advertising new books and spreading information about the latest releases through content creators. Creators on this side of TikTok often combine popular trends with book-related content, allowing it to reach a more widespread audience than usual. Additionally, social media targets adolescents and young adults, groups of people who are not commonly stereotyped as book readers. Thus, BookTok creates a culture of young readers. If you are a young reader, you feel like you have a community and are more likely to continue reading. If you don’t consider yourself a book person, you may feel that you are missing out and want to give that one a try.
BookTok remains a fantastic example of what literacy looks like in the 21st century. It shows us that the art of knowing how to read and practicing that skill is still alive among the younger generation. It shows us that a traditional way of consuming media is still very much alive in today’s culture. BookTok alone is changing the way we view literature.
Haley Starner is a student who loves reading as a pastime. Haley has four brothers and would like to give a special shoutout to her mom, who is her biggest inspiration and best friend. In her free time, she also enjoys growing in her faith and exploring creative hobbies like sewing, baking, and crocheting.
Honey, Where’s My Literacy?: How the Digital Age Changed What It Means to Be Literate
Literacy has always been a fundamental skill acquired through education. However, as a result of the advent of mass media, the evolution of the ways we create and consume information, and the technologies behind them, literacy has changed as well. Today, literacy is no longer just the ability to read and write; it also includes the ability to critically evaluate the information we consume. The demands of literacy became especially prominent with the acceleration of globalization, when the spread of information, misinformation, and propaganda became much easier. The challenge was only exacerbated once computers, the tools to create and spread media, became widely accessible.
Before the rise of digital technology, evaluating information was often simpler because the average person encountered far fewer sources of media, and those sources were generally easier to identify and evaluate. The news once gave you news; now an anonymous individual with an internet connection can summarize the current conflict with Iran with wild inaccuracy, post it on TikTok, and convince millions. As the number of forms media can take has increased, the question, “Is this real?” has become far more ambiguous and much more difficult to answer.
Seeing is no longer believing. To remain literate, we must go out of our way to confirm the things we see are true by consulting multiple trusted sources. After witnessing the birth and growth of AI firsthand, I used to pride myself on my ability to root out the slop and tell whether something was real. But with the current iterations of the technology, even people like me are losing that confidence. AI has not created misinformation, but it has made creating and spreading it easier than ever before. Misinformation has taken a serious toll on our ability to evaluate the information we consume because consuming media is no longer always done with the pursuit of truth in mind. Instead, consuming media is largely a recreational pastime.
So, has literacy actually decreased over the years? In my opinion, despite everything, no, it hasn’t. If we presented the same problems of today—misinformation, mass media, and AI—to the people of yesterday, they would likely struggle even more than we do. Though the media has mutated and evolved over many years, so have we. We are aware of, and can form opinions about, problems happening on the other side of the globe. We can share our opinions, come to logical conclusions more effectively, and collaborate with people across the country to create change. That takes literacy. Maybe literacy itself hasn’t declined after all these years, but the importance of literacy—and the opportunities that require it—has only increased.
Brandon Edelin enjoys eating, sleeping, playing video games, and reading. There is nothing he likes more than being home with his cat and being lazy.
National English Honor Society
The National English Honor Society (NEHS), founded and sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, is the only international organization exclusively for secondary students and faculty who, in the field of English, merit special note for past and current accomplishments. Individual secondary schools are invited to petition for a local chapter, through which individuals may be inducted into Society membership. Immediate benefits of affiliation include academic recognition, scholarship and award eligibility, and opportunities for networking with others who share enthusiasm for, and accomplishment in, the language arts.
America’s first honor society was founded in 1776, but high school students didn’t have access to such organizations for another 150 years. Since then, high school honor societies have been developed in leadership, drama, journalism, French, Spanish, mathematics, the sciences, and in various other fields, but not in English. In 2005, National English Honor Society launched and has been growing steadily since, becoming one of the largest academic societies for secondary schools.
As Joyce Carol Oates writes, “This is the time for which we have been waiting.” Or perhaps it was Shakespeare: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer . . .” we celebrate English studies through NEHS.
National English Honor Society accepts submissions to our blog, NEHS Museletter, from all membership categories (students, Advisors, and alumni). If you are interested in submitting a blog, please read the Suggested Guidelines on our website. Email any questions and all submissions to: submit@nehsmuseletter.us.
