What Makes a Democracy Strong?
Author: Henry Donoughe
Intelligence in America is on the decline. Literacy is slipping across all age ranges, with a third of high school seniors scoring below “basic” on the 2025 National Assessment of Education Progress (AP News, 2025) and half of adults having read no books in 2023 (Harrington, 2025). Technology has ruined attention spans through short-form entertainment being eternally accessible on our phones, a cure for boredom forever in our pockets. Institutions of higher education have come under fire by the current Republican administration over teaching courses on gender and racial studies, in addition to the dismantling of the Department of Education with mass firings (Faguy, 2025). These trends are also linked with trends of inequity, with poorer individuals seeing greater negative impact on their literacy and attention abilities.
A threat to free thinking and critical reasoning abilities is subsequently a threat to democracy. Throughout history, propaganda machines have churned out alternative views meant to subdue populations into complacency with a government’s actions. It is widely known and accepted that governments can and will lie if it progresses their agenda, which is most often because that agenda is to the detriment of the people. However, in a democracy, it is the intent that those people hold the power of governing. Therefore, it is the responsibility of those people to be able to sort right from wrong, to recognize misinformation and mistruths meant to bend their opinions.
People must stay informed, an increasingly difficult task in a world where digitized media has made the pace of information too rapid to keep up with. Being on the internet means being assaulted with headlines and compressions of stories condensed into 280-word posts, usually intended to inflame a reaction and bait a response. On top of that, reading people’s responses typically uncovers radicalization only possible under protection of anonymity, revealing stances which nobody would actually voice out loud to another human being out of fear of permanent ostracism. Regardless, it seems that the internet, in its endless pools of information, has just as much misinformation and reactionary outcry that it becomes more intellectually harmful than helpful.
Finding reliable sources of information becomes crucial to participation in a democracy. Reports from unbiased, trusted news sources are a good way to stay up to date on current events, but a common issue is running into paywalled sites. For past events, finding corroborated papers from universities or established publications is perfect for academic knowledge. The inherent process of absorbing this information will help form practices of comprehending short- and long-form political writings, which will allow one to be a more active citizen throughout one’s life. On top of this, the actual information being absorbed provides substantial practical value to such an individual.
References
Faguy, Ana. 2025. “What Is the Department of Education — and Can Trump Dismantle It?” BBC News, July 15, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79zxzj90nno.
Harrington, Mary. 2025. “Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good.” New York Times, July 28, 2025.
“High School Students’ Scores Fall in Reading and Math.” 2025. AP News, accessed October 11, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/naep-reading-math-scores-12th-grade-c18d6e3fbc125f12948cc70cb85a520a.
