25-Year-Old Influencer Alix Earle Sparks Debate After Revealing She's 'Never Read A Book'

Score one for the alarmists who say TikTok is rotting Gen Z and Gen Alpha's brains: 25-year-old TikTok star Alix Earle has never read a book.

Earle was among the very first people TikTok made famous, and she has since become one of Gen Z's most recognizable "famous for being famous" influencers.

And in a new interview, Earle revealed something about herself that will have everyone whose worried about Gen Z and Gen Alpha deeply alarmed: She can't name a single book she's read since she was a child.

Which is pretty wild since part of what rose Earle to fame was posting about her life AT COLLEGE. Anyway!

In a chat with Interview magazine, editor-in-chief Mel Ortenberg asked her the last book she read. Huge mistake!

Earle replied:

“I’ve never read a book. Like, maybe Dr. Seuss?”

It seems important to reiterate, reader, that posting about COLLEGE LIFE is part of how this person got famous. She holds a degree in Business Administration and everything!

As you might guess, Earle's admission has touched off quite a debate online.

In her interview, Earle seems to think that not having ever read a book as—this cannot be stressed enough—A COLLEGE GRADUATE was a bit of cutesy ditziness.

But many online did not agree.

One viral tweet response to Earle's quote reads:

"we as a society need to be more embarrassed about admitting things like this."

Yeah. And we wonder why we essentially have a dictatorship in the U.S. now—one that Gen Z voted for in proportions not seen among young people for generations when it comes to conservative electoral candidates.

But lest you think the Gen Z and Gen Alpha literacy crises are just some moral panic, think again.

Data show that Gen Z has arrived at college with inappropriately low reading levels that have left them largely devoid of the kinds of literacy skills required to parse and understand a text.

Case in point: In 2024, a literature professor at Columbia University, one of the most prestigious institutions in America, told The Atlantic he's had to remove Moby-Dick from his Herman Melville course because Gen Z can't handle the book. Moby-Dick!

And it's even worse for Gen Alpha behind them: Data show that less than a third of Gen Alpha fourth graders can actually read at a fourth-grade level.

Given the gravity of the situation, Earle's cute little admission has not landed well with pretty much anybody normal on the internet.

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Though some speculated that it was all but certain that Earle was lying.

Regardless, the most chilling part of this whole thing might be Gen Z's own reaction to people criticizing Earle's claim.

Some have reported that posts on TikTok discussing Earle's quote unfavorably have been flooded with defensive, angry responses from Gen Z'ers insisting it's fine to be functionally illiterate.

Interesting times we're living in... God help us all.