you can absolutely build comprehension by just clicking around and figuring out what works.

That’s not reading comprehension. A person clicking around a bunch of menus can not read a piece of text and extract information from it.

This is a basic level 2 literacy question:

1 in 5 americans can’t answer this question correctly currently and literacy is getting worse in america over time, these kids stand no chance.

Level 4 literacy (what I would consider a proper reading comprehension ability) is described as:

At level 4, adults can read long and dense texts presented on multiple pages in order to complete tasks that involve access, understanding, evaluation and reflection about the text(s) contents … Successful task completion often requires the production of knowledge-based inferences. Texts and tasks at Level 4 may deal with abstract and unfamiliar situations. They often feature both lengthy contents and a large amount of distracting information, which is sometimes as prominent as the information required to complete the task. At this level, adults are able to reason based on intrinsically complex questions that share only indirect matches with the text contents, and/or require taking into consideration several pieces of information dispersed throughout the materials. Tasks may require evaluating subtle evidence-claims or persuasive discourse relationships. Conditional information is frequently present in tasks at this level and must be taken into consideration by the respondent. Response modes may involve assessing or sorting complex assertions.

Only 12% of americans currently have this reading comprehension level.