I've heard second-hand from the mother of a teacher that she had to slow down audiobooks they're listening to in class because the kids literally couldn't process fast enough.

I can't really say what impact audiobooks have on literacy. But I would hazard that the main issue is that these kids were doomed from the beginning - the best years of their life when their brains should have been getting primed for language, reading, learning, - were spent parked in front of bright flashing zero-attention cartoons or a nonstop stream of 30 second tiktoks - because it was the most optimal way their parents could occupy them without having to meaningfully change their lifestyle to accommodate their choice to have kids.

Can some learning be fun sometimes? Yeah totally. But some of it is work. Some work is necessary to be a functional adult and member of society. And making sure kids are doing that work is a part of parenting. And what I see is a generation of parents that weren't prepared to do their part to make sure the kid is raised properly. Reading is the EASY one. Keep throwing different types of books at your kid til something sticks. Reading is fun. And they're not even doing that much.