Gen X, millennial and gen Z men are reading less than boomers and older generations in Australia, and there’s only one good thing about it. Thirsty, bookish young women might now be spared the niche heterofatalist torture of a sexual objective frustrated by the obstacle of male literary opinion.

Oh, what a second-by-second social negotiation it was; if she hadn’t read the enthused-about text, would her desired object find her vapid and shallow? If she had read it, she was in even more trouble: would his interest be piqued or levelled dare she confess she found Stranger in a Strange Land a meandering journey? Would she argue Fight Club beat you around the head with its message? Would the young woman really have to listen to him read out bits from And the Ass Saw the Angel before his pants removal?

I’m grateful, at least, that the latest generation of girls who bear the heterosexual burden are unlikely to experience the unique cruelty of collective, instant male disinterest after blurting out “Goldberry is a completely unnecessary character!” amid casual Lord of the Rings chat at the pub.

But I am sad that, if figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and discussed by the ABC last week are to be believed, the steps of this complex, sometimes ugly, sometimes exhilarating dance may be becoming the stuff of anthropological archives rather than an ongoing scene of potential frisson.

The ABS data does exclude reading for study or any online reading – including news – so it’s possible younger men are indulging in the written word in other areas.

Oh, boys; with the passage of time, have your forsaken your Goldberry … or have you forgotten her entirely?

It’s even sadder news that reading is down across the board. Among Australian senior school students, according to Australia Reads, 29% of them did not reportedly read a physical book last year.

It’s not an Australian problem. In the 1970s, 60% of American year 12 students read daily. By 2016, it was 16%.

Obviously, screens, the internet, binge TV replacing long-form narrative consumption habits and the – yes, again – handheld doom machines are accessories to their cultural decline. Johann Hari’s excellent book Stolen Focus explains in detail how technology has “hacked” our attention spans for short-form, immediate interruption, with the result of rewiring our brains against the concentration required to immerse in a book. In case you can’t find the time, energy or quietude to read it, Hari also explains that overwork, chronic stress, ultra-processed foods, poor sleep and environmental stressors are compounding the problem.

Neuroscientists agree: Prof Maryanne Wolf has warned that reduced practice in sustained reading may not only weaken the brain’s capacity to manage complex texts, but might also denude critical thinking, empathy and cognitive depth.

This is where the gendered division of the world’s remaining novel readers may be most painfully felt. Anna Burkey, from the book industry initiative Australia Reads, told the ABC that studies have shown parents read less to their male children than female ones, reinforcing an unconscious pattern that puts crucial developmental tools further away from boys who need them.

As educators, male literary identity Brandon Jack and the Tough Guy book club movement strategise how to reverse the damage of gender-holing literary curiosity and get books back into boys’ hands, the rest of us must grapple with the emotional world the present reading divide has contributed to creating.

It’s a gendered empathy deficit. Not only does it facilitate social carelessness and cruelty, but it is socially isolating. And it is leaving men and boys lonely and socially isolated at disproportional rates compared with women and girls.

Nearly 43% of Australian men report loneliness, a recent survey shows, with 16% experiencing severe loneliness. I can’t help but recall advice my mother gave me growing up as an only child with working parents: “You’ll never feel alone if you make friends with books.”

I didn’t, because I did.

Humans invented storytelling in order to provide lessons in survival: we faced this, we dealt with it this way, this is the result, for good or ill. Sure, we can get stories from screens, but as that market has widened it’s also flattened; a “new literalism” of storytelling on screens has emerged of such comprehensive over-explication that there are few imaginative demands placed on viewers at all.

It’s from the imaginative, interpretative effort of reading stories from text that our brains wire a broader, personally felt social understanding, which provide us strategies for forming connections, maintaining relationships, overcoming restrictive and uncomfortable social roles, and being able to negotiate systems of help and of care.

The same social psychologist who tracked the decline in reading among American teenagers published data from her 40-year longitudinal study identifying a maturity regression among today’s western young people. They’re having less sex, fewer dates, less civic participation and drinking less, meaning that 18-year-olds are more like how 15-year-olds used to be 40 years ago. Other scholars confirm; the rising generations have become more risk-averse.

I’ve argued that the omnipresent social surveillance of mobile phone technology may be a reason … but one wonders if it’s partially because they’re consuming less vicarious experience from books to construct informed risk matrices around what they’re likely to encounter.

There are always social and emotional risks in the dance of sexual attraction. But sometimes, ah – mutual book-learnin’ left boys and girls with some stories to tell.

• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist.