I’ve flagged the article and I would suggest others do the same. The Atlantic never posts things that satisfy the hacker spirit in any way. It is almost always puffery and melodrama meant to attract clicks and views, but the subject matter itself is trite and not worth discussing on a hacker forum.
I would think that the decline of reading would be relevant to discuss on a hacker forum.
Interesting phenomens are often discussed here so I personally do not perceive it as offtopic. Yet as you said, I have the same feeling from this article. Click bait grievance posting.
As a CS instructor, I find this article extremely interesting, FWIW.