Always an excuse being invented so people are not accountable. That is what I read between the lines of that article.
As far as a “reading problem” - some of us were raised with reading (recreational) was high on the list of leisure activities. Not non-stop, unfettered video games, social media, etc.
A love of reading was instilled early-on by parents then teachers who read engaging stories to us, allowing us to follow along and learn from it.
Alas - we fail to train and raise kids - then blame something else for the “reading problems”...
Ironically, the internet has returned reading to the top of leisure time activities.
Of course, it has also created short attention span readers. People who can’t digest more than a few paragraphs at a time. That (imho) is the real reading crisis. It isn’t that people don’t read, it’s that they can’t read in depth; can’t spend the several hours it takes to digest a serious work.