Read and Right: Are Magazines a Force for Social Good?

The research is beginning to bear out what many of us suspected would be the truth: AI is making us stupider. A recent study suggests that after just 10 minutes of interaction with generative AI, subjects performed demonstrably worse on cognitive tests, many giving up altogether.

Meanwhile, denizens of Gen Z — the generation tasked with fixing a planet gone horribly, horribly wrong — are showing up to their post-secondary educational institutions without the ability to read. The first generation to grow up exclusively within a world crammed with smartphones and the internet is treating the written word pretty much exactly as one might expect: They read only 5.8 books in a year.

Reading has long been proven to be the soil, water and seeds of cognitive function. What’s more, comprehension has been demonstrated to be enhanced through reading on paper, instead of via screens. Is there a role that magazines can play in rescuing our atrophied brains?

Playing on Preferences

Of course they can. Other studies have shown that — to take the much-maligned Gen Z as an example again — younger readers, such as they are, appreciate the tactile experience of turning pages, despite their immersion in digital environments. What’s more, they don’t pre-judge digital media as being superior to print; it just happens to be more easily accessible.  

To take a piece of anecdotal evidence, Kalo Media’s Carla Kalogeridis, in a recent episode of the Covering the Spread podcast, talked about one of her association magazine clients:

“One of our clients is a dental association and it’s for student members. They talk to me about how much they love print because they spend all day with an iPad in their hands. That’s how they do their work. They’re taking pictures. They’re filming. They’re looking things up. They’re receiving patient records. They’ve got screen fatigue.”

Why else might a generation steeped in Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime gravitate toward the magazine reading experience? How about the opportunity to own your own piece of a media property instead of just renting it? As magazine expert Peter Houston remarked in his Covering the Spread episode, “There’s three core human desires that digital just cannot service … One is ownership, one is membership and one is showmanship. So it’s that idea that, if I’ve grown up and all I did was subscribe to music, or I subscribed to movies or whatever, and I never owned DVDs and I never own CDs or records, all of a sudden, I can own this magazine. It’s mine. I can pay my money and I can take it home.”

Another often overlooked advantage is control. Peter continued, “The other thing with a magazine is it’s a boundaried experience. Whatever it is … it’s 50 pages, 60 pages, 100 pages. I can look at it and I can see, ‘Okay, well, that’s going to take me that long to read.’ And once I’m inside it, I can say, ‘Well, I’m not going to read that feature because it’s ten pages. But I do have ten minutes right now that I can read this five-page feature. So I’ve got control. Whereas I just absolutely don’t have control on Instagram.’”

There’s a path toward attracting younger readers to a magazine. But how do you keep them once they arrive?

Doing Good Vs. Being Good

This may be magazines’ most powerful expression of social goodness: quality. A well-crafted magazine is a positive force for social good because it is well-crafted. The medium is the message.

Let’s be honest: We are awash in a sea of mediocrity — in our culture generally and in publishing in particular. A magazine assembled with true care, skill and enthusiasm instantly stands above its peers and endears itself to its audience. The loving details that a conscientious publishing team creates — the graphics, the headlines, the original photography — may only be noticed by a fraction of readers.

But that fraction will be converted into the magazine’s most devoted followers and advocates. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll adopt that same spirit of craftsmanship and apply it toward their own vocation. Excellence breeds excellence.

Can magazines really save the world? Yes, but only if we make them worth reading.

What do you think? Can a magazine make a difference? Drop us a line at contact@quartocreative.com.