The Collapse of Cultural Formation

It’s time for us to take stock of what we see in 2026—and also over the past twenty years or so—and be honest.

This is a moment of American decay, not dominance. What we’re witnessing right now is America’s descent into cultural nihilism. This, of course, is reversible. But we have to be willing to tell what we see, to quote Charles Peguy—which is hard to do, in this moment of distraction and noise. And there are four trends that exemplify where we are culturally: the collapse of the humanities, the end of leisure reading, the flattening of serious film and television into content, and the explosion of various forms of gambling. Some of this is imposed and some is self-inflicted, but all of this, if not corrected, will result in profound spiritual and political decay, worse perhaps than what we’re witnessing now.

It makes sense, I think, to begin with what’s happening to the humanities in the United States. Syracuse University recently announced that it’s eliminating eighty-four of its programs, including classics. The University of Chicago has paused admissions into PhD programs. Other institutions of higher learning, both small and large, have made similar decisions. Schools are also closing. Hampshire College, for example, recently announced it will close at the conclusion of the upcoming fall semester. Countless others have already shuttered.

Universities say they’re reducing the humanities—and liberal arts colleges are closing—because they’re no longer attracting students, and that’s true. At the turn of the twentieth century, students received a liberal education in the truest sense: serious study of philosophy and literature and Latin and the like. Now, in 2026, the most common field of study is some form of business.

And certain political figures might argue that these majors have become too ideological and reworking them or cutting them will benefit students, and perhaps that’s also true. But that this is happening at all shows we have forgotten why we study such things. There are two reasons:  to be formed as human beings and to receive and understand our cultural patrimony. One might receive formation through participation in religious institutions, but those who say they don’t believe or belong to any sort of faith—the unaffiliated—now number something like 22 to 29 percent of the public. So people are left adrift. And they are adrift in a country they don’t understand or want to better, with both civic literacy and civic engagement relatively low. Only seven states require that students take a full year of civics while in school. This leads to a sense of dislocation from both the country and the broader traditions of the West.

You might reverse this if you took the time to develop a program of study—a kind of crash course in the great books. But leisure reading is also on the wane. In 2025, the University of Florida and University College London announced the results of a study they jointly conducted on reading. Per their data, there has been a 40 percent drop in leisure reading in the last twenty years, with only 16 percent of adults reporting in 2023 that they read for pleasure. Libraries also have fewer books, opting instead for digital resources or “libraries of things.” In 2022, there were 162 million fewer books on shelves. That’s a 20 percent drop from 2010. And literacy itself is even declining. Something like 54 percent of adults have a literacy level that’s below sixth grade, according to results from a study taken by the National Literacy Institute. Perhaps in recognition of these trends, Hannaford in Rochester, NH recently removed its books and magazines rack, replacing it with yet another shelf of standard supermarket goods.

Reading, of course, has been on the decline for some time. The advent of television and cinema, to a lesser extent, saw to that. But there was at least an effort to develop serious television shows or films, and they led to conversations at work or between friends that strengthened cultural and communal bonds. The creation of serious visual media hasn’t stopped. In fact, you might argue we’re still in the golden age of television and film. What has changed, though, is the intrusion of technology companies in the world of entertainment and the use of algorithms to dictate recommendations and taste. There is too much choice. And this excess choice has had two results:  the erosion of the moviegoing experience, which naturally led to conversations and common ties, and the development of the curated experience, where there are endless films and television shows offered to you and you alone, some of which were made specifically to satisfy algorithmic demands. In short, streaming has turned art into content.

And streaming is prioritized. Ten years ago, the theatrical window was 90 days, giving people time to see films once the opening week crowds had gone away. But now it’s anywhere between 30 and 45 days and sometimes shorter, if a film isn’t performing well at the box office. This encourages people to say, “I’ll just wait for the movie to debut on streaming so I can watch it at home.” What draws people are the so-called “tentpole” films, which today are usually superhero spectacles or remakes. But even those are on the decline. “Thunderbolts*,” for instance, was one of Marvel-Disney’s lowest-performing films. A recent “event” film, “KPop Demon Hunters,” was critically acclaimed but drew $24.7 million at the box office. That was by design. The film was distributed by Netflix, and the company released it on a limited basis only. Most people streamed it. As of now, it’s the most-watched Netflix title in history.

“KPop Demon Hunters” is perhaps the best of the curated experience. But the film is a cartoon, one primarily directed at children. And these trends, dictated by streaming services and technology companies, are self-reinforcing. The shorter theatrical windows prevent people from scheduling time to see a movie with a friend, so they wait to watch it at home. This suggests to the higher-ups that people want the shorter windows, so they don’t make any changes. And Netflix’s strategy behind “KPop Demon Hunters” likely told them that their approach was working. But had the film been released in theaters only, it would have likely pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars.

The era of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” a charming comedy that was released in 2002 and stayed in theaters for nearly a year, is over. That happened because of word-of-mouth conversations and personal recommendations. It’s streaming all the way down now. And Netflix isn’t the only streaming service. There are countless others. And it’s entirely possible you might never watch the same thing as someone else in the country—or even in your family. “Severance,” had it been released ten or fifteen years ago, would be the main topic at every water cooler. But not everyone has AppleTV+. So rather than diffusing the entire culture, creating connections, it becomes something that’s niche, something you do in your spare time, akin to collecting stamps or designing model planes. It’s something you’d like to talk about with more people, but you recognize you can’t. So you do it alone and keep your thoughts private. Television and movies are perhaps the most democratic of the public art forms, and their reduction to content further pours acid on an already-brittle common culture.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. What this produces is cultural nihilism. The collapse of liberal education, reading, and the transformation of visual art into curated content, along with the decline of faith, results in negative formation. We are being taught that there is nothing transcendent, that there is only the here and now, that art is ultimately a waste of time or something you consume passively, while washing the floors. The only thing that people seem to believe in collectively is money—which is why business is the most popular major and why streaming has replaced moviegoing and why, in part, reading has declined. And if there is nothing beyond the here and now, then it makes sense to try to become as successful as is possible, and one of the ways to do that is to gamble.

Gambling appears to be the last common experience people have in the United States. But this isn’t playing cards with your friends in the garage or even taking a youthful trip to Las Vegas. It’s all on your phone, and it’s become possible to bet on just about anything. The numbers are staggering. In 2025, 57 percent of adults participated in some form of gambling, up from 43 percent in 2019. It’s sports-betting via DraftKings or other services. Or betting on the winners of wars, elections, Academy Awards, or even on how many times Elon Musk might post online.

For The Atlantic, McKay Coppins spent a year as what he called a “degenerate gambler,” so he could demonstrate what a scourge this has become. Even though he believed he didn’t have an addictive personality, and even though his editors gave him money to spend, so he wouldn’t have to spend his own money, Coppins did, in fact, become addicted. He details how he quickly became enraptured with throwing money at all sorts of games and how he’d be on his phone, placing bets, instead of spending time with his family. He discusses how he’d become irrationally enraged if a team he’d expected to win instead lost, costing him money. In total, he lost $9,891. Luckily, it was the magazine’s money and not his.

I am not a declinist. In fact, I find narratives of decline to be often frustrating. But it’s important to be honest about what you see, and these trends, all alarming, point to the emergence of a decadent culture, as Ross Douthat reminded us in his book The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, published in 2020. Decadence is the beginning of decline. It’s like the person who feels chest pain and assumes it’s heartburn, when it’s in fact a mild heart attack—one not strong enough to kill, but one strong enough to start causing damage.

One of the great problems of our age, though, is that our attention has been captured by a variety of economic and political actors. The gambling companies and apps I’ve mentioned use the same technology as the streaming services, social media companies, and the like. They are able to capture attention because of the nihilism at the heart of our culture, brought about by the collapse of some of the most important formative elements we have. Alexis de Tocqueville talked about how his great concern was that democracies such as the United States could become schoolmaster states, with a population reduced to “timid and industrious animals.” We’re on-track to become a casino state, with a bunch of flashing lights and whirling sounds, and a population staring into the slots, spending hours there, all while losing countless amounts of money.

None of this is fated. In fact, there are already some positive trends. States and schools have implemented cellphone bans, with positive results, and some are even considering cutting out so-called “ed tech” entirely. Young people have developed a phrase—“touch grass”—which implies getting out and actually experiencing reality, rather than spending your time alone, connected to a device. And despite the slow-motion collapse of the humanities at colleges and universities, there are organizations like the Catherine Project, founded by St. John’s tutor Zena Hitz, dedicated to bringing the Great Books to the average citizen. You can sign up for seminars on a variety of subjects.

But all of this isn’t enough. An Aristotelian and a Catholic would both say, in different ways, that we as people have agency and can seek the Good—or seek God. Which means that we can take action. And rather than have things happen to us, we make things happen. But too many people have become, per Tocqueville, timid. We seem resigned to this cultural nihilism. So correcting this will take real effort. It’ll take average people—and politicians—who are willing to speak loudly and forcefully against various trends and take the steps to reverse them. It’ll mean millionaires and billionaires will have to invest in the culture, as Andrew Carnegie did, instead of in their various pet projects.

Decline is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Restoring the health of our polity means we have to get to work.

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