So? Using a calculator probably degrades your ability to do sums in your head, yet a calculator allows many people to do sums they wouldn't be able to do just in their heads.

And literacy degrades people's ability to memorize texts.

It does, and something is lost.

Storytelling is/was a great human tradition, perhaps the defining one in a literal sense. It's becoming extinct because of literacy. Today it's considered an eccentric pursuit.

That doesn't mean literacy is bad or that campfire stories repeated and evolved for generations are better than novels or films. But, oral storytelling as art or culture has characteristics that just aren't present in novels just like novels have characteristics that aren't present in TV shows.

If you are willing to be more abstract about it, you might compare it to working as an Apple engineer and collecting edible roots near a stream. The former is clearly superior as a way of feeding your family. The latter still has certain human qualities that are beneficial to people and worth preserving.

As we move forward we lose some things which may be valuable. Nostalgia and the desire to preserve is not a bad thing.

I recently realized that I like plays. Movies have mostly replaced them, which is a shame.

However, there are things that movies can do that plays definitely can't do, and the reverse is true as well.

I think that there's room for both!