I echo MIchael's comment and will add something, which is that instant gratification not only has eroded patience, it has also eroded distress tolerance writ large.
Distress tolerance is required for reading long-form text and even long-form audio, such as podcasts. I have what I would consider a good attention span (always have, I was a voracious reader since like age 6), but have even found myself so eager to consume information in a quick manner that I listen or watch content at 1.5x or 1.75x. And it's not just me, it's my similarly aged colleagues and ripples up the generational ladder as well.
Amazon deliveries, Door Dash, streaming services, on-demand [whatever], have all helped create this mess, probably beginning with frozen TV dinners and the VCR. It's not just the internet and 15-second sound bites, but our entire society that has accelerated to the point that we no longer enjoy the process, but instead just want to leap to the outcome. For what it's worth, I believe that this entitlement has led to a lack of gratitude as well, which has a whole bag of problems associated with it as well.
Furthermore, it is showing up in spades across the counseling realm in clinically significnant ways. Unless we get Gen X parents (the original participation trophy kids who were taught to avoid distress) to change their ways, subsequent generations will continue down this path, yielding an entire society full of Cluster B-looking adults who throw tantrums when they don't get their way.
Anything that is not natural and requires effort, like reading, will always be prey to distraction (i.e. entertainment), to which children will naturally turn because it requires little effort.
Before the internet, reading for pleasure was itself a distraction. In other words, it’s what you turned to when you had time to kill or wanted to get lost in a good story. So, reading for pleasure became a habit (as I discuss in my book, Life Before the Internet).
Then along came TV (and before that, radio), probably the first major form of distraction from reading. But its effect was limited because you could only watch TV at home at certain times, which meant that reading still had a place in children’s lives.
But the arrival of the smartphone and social media, which essentially put entertainment in one’s pocket, signalled the ultimate in distraction. Try competing against that with reading books – good luck!
So the culprit is hiding in plain sight – it’s the smartphone in Gen Z’s pocket, which they grew up with, and which gradually weaned them off reading.
1) At the most basic level—over this approximately fifty-year time period—book reading has become a less satisfying activity than alternatives, such as TV, film, video games, social media. In short, teens have better non-book alternatives now. One solution is to write better books and encouraging parents to restrict alternatives. Writing better books is easier said than done however, because the profit motive pulls the best writers toward the biggest profits, and the biggest profits are not in books. Writing for TV and film pays better. So how do we write better books with less relative pay for book authors? We'll need to appeal to the prestige, patriotism and virtue of writing excellent books. We might think of this as a religious or moral undertaking.
2) At a more sophisticated level—book reading has been crowded out by college admissions preparation, i.e. resume/application padding. This is harder to see in the data however because the statistic of "average number of hours spent on homework" is probably hiding important information about the high-, middle- and low-performing students. Let's start by focussing on the top students. We know from experience that the top high school students are now taking-on enormous class loads, sometimes three or four AP classes per year--on top of three or four other classes per year. See these school profiles. Call the office and speak to a counselor to figure out what's going on.
These AP classes have significantly more homework and reading than classes in the seventies and eighties. These classes simply did not exist 50 years ago and have gradually increased in number since then. Top students are also doing more extracurriculars to boost their college applications, e.g. sports, clubs, music, etc. Top students don't have much time leftover for pleasure reading after a full day of school, extracurriculars and AP/honors classes. They need downtime. TV can be a great way to relax. Similarly they need to connect with other humans. They need love from their families and affirmation from their friends. So after a long day of work, what are top students choosing to do? Family, friends and TV are top choices; probably social media too. They also need sleep. You might consider looking at how sleep deprived they are. Call around to pediatricians in Los Gatos, Cupertino, Saratoga and Palo Alto and you'll hear about it.
At the other end of the spectrum, the middle- and lower-performing students are probably doing less homework than they did in the seventies and eighties, but at top schools, I would bet all students are doing more. How is your "average hours spent on homework" calculated? At schools in low-income neighborhoods the homework hours have probably dropped or stayed the same. For these students, academic standards and workloads have probably fallen. These students also have much better non-book alternatives, e.g. streaming TV, hundreds of shows to watch, a dozen social media options, including YouTube.
Also school sports and school spirit are much more intense and important than in the seventies and eighties. So for the average student, time spent on school-oriented stuff has probably increased over the fifty-year period. See this Los Gatos High School video to get a feel for the CRAZY amount of school spirit at some high schools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkwUix8RE0k
In order to make the basketball team at most high schools, it takes a year round commitment--summer league, private camps, personal trainers. Sports have become the centerpiece of most high schools—taking precedence over academics. Walk into the lobby of any high school and you'll see the vast array of trophy cases, player portraits, mascots paintings, posters and championship banners. See this Los Gatos High School website. It looks like a college athletics website: https://losgatosathletics.com
Likewise there is a great deal more focus on band, cheer, dance, debate, clubs, etc. This focus on sports and extracurriculars takes away from reading books. Why is this happening? It's all about padding the resume for college admissions. The stakes and status for college admission have become so high that students are pouring most of their time and energy into admissions preparation. Do college admissions incentivize reading outside of class assignments? Nope.
On average then—i.e. for the “average student”—the amount of time spent on homework has stayed constant because the top student are spending much more time on homework and the middle- and low-performing students are spending much less on homework, especially in low-income communities. Thus the "average" statistics that you're dealing with are hiding important information about what students are actually doing regarding school related activities.
I suggest visiting high schools and talking to real students. It should become apparent what’s going on.
How do we encourage more reading? See the above analysis and do the opposite. Again easier said than done because the incentives are driving students to take the above actions. So how do we change the incentives?
- Less focus on school sports and more focus on regular exercise.
- Less focus on school spirit.
- Less focus on AP classes and more focus on independent reading.
- Less focus on cognitive skills for college admissions and more focus on excellent moral character through reading.
- Less TV, internet and video games.
- Be physically present with your children. Remember to love them.
- Assign 1500 pages of independent reading per semester. Students choose their own books and are responsible for reading for 30 minutes each day. When they complete a book, they notify the teacher. She verifies that they actually read the book by interviewing them for 5-7 minutes.
- Promote school choice and private school options that cater to niche student interests. These schools will naturally curate better reading options for schools.
-Get away from the one-size-fits all public high school model.
-Encourage colleges to include an "independent reading" questions on admissions essays. This might take the form of a Zoom interview in which student provide a list of their independent reading and the interviewer will verify a sufficient sample from their list.
-Cut funding to public schools and colleges so private ventures aren't crowded out.
-Eliminate tax breaks to college athletics.
-Encourage reading and book discussion on Substack.
All of the comments here make a lot of sense! Im going to add a few more that werent mentioned. Im 48 years old. I have 3 daughters age 21, 11, and 9. The oldest born in 2002.
#1) 70's- 90's decline... did u consider our parents got divorced, mothers went back to work, and we became latch key kids? That had a profound effect on my reading. Even compared to my 10 year older sister. My mom had degrees from 3 ivy's in english but after the divorce when I was 7 no one spent the time with me to make reading a "thing". On top of that I became anxious and all that so as an adult i was diagnosed ADHD which could be nature or nurture they say. I know this is a personal annecdote but in my generation this was more the norm than the exception. EVERYONE'S moms and dads worked, and lots of divorce made for chaos and using outdoor time and tv as a babysitter. We certainly played more than kids do now. Outdoor time wasnt a bad thing. But in the 80's/90's there werent a lot of parents around modeling downtime. Then increasingly parents felt bad about leaving the kids to fend for themselves so my generation shrink wraps them. Still no modeling reading. It must be modeled.
#2) Phonics. When they stopped teaching phonics for 10 years GenZ was in preschool. My kid got no phonics and was placed in a special reading program. We are in an affluent well educated diatrict. This was a national experiment that is changing back to phonics now (my 2 little girls went to private school with phonics and are lightyears ahead of where my oldest was in 3rd and 5th grades). The effects of the anti-phonics debacle may be masked by tech and phones though. Phonics started to be reintroduced around 2017-2020. Already that gen Z was lost. I actually homeschooled my genZ daughter in 6th grade because her reading was at a very low level and she has absolutely no cognitive issues. I was stumped until I started digging into her curriculum from kindergarten. I wasnt paying attention until we got her evaluated and she had no issues. During our one homeschool year we went to book conventions all over the country. She became a voratious reader in one year. That brings me to the next point...
#3) it wasnt just Potter! Twilight, Percy Jackson, Maze Runner, Hunger Games, Diary of a Whimpy Kid, Sarah J Maas books... SO many YA books exploded on the scene. Book Cons were a massive phenomenon! I dont think people appreciate how cultish it was from 2010-2015 in part because in those years phones/social media and YA books complemented each other. For a short time YA books/film/and social media were new, GOOD, exciting, and social. Booktube was a HUGE phenomenon. BLM, political organizing, trans, mental diagnoses, those things werent "in" yet. Reading lists werent political. Now everything is about subversively reading "banned" books (the banned list is assigned reading in our middle school) and anti-whiteness literature. Kids are afraid to read the "wrong" morally prescribed books so they often just read none. And I dont mean they arent still rebellious against adults. I mean, they are afraid to read certain things because of peer pressure. That's actually really sad. There isnt a lot of "omg did you read this new book??" anymore. And certain authors are not getting published or promoted. Its a very wierd time! Im living this twice with the same sex kids in the same school district and its STARKLY different where books are concerned. A racial justice church group donated 100 copies of Ibram X Khendi's Stamped book to our elementary libraries (600 kids). There are "marginalized" sections placed at the front of every library in our district. And 2 of our 5 librarians have been cut in exchange for DEI programs. Im a liberal... and this is over the top. (Here's a taste of what happened to booktube https://bookriot.com/booktube-according-to-booktubers/)
So all things combined I think there are social forces that were swimming in the same current as tech and then hit a hurricane when tech exploded.
For some reason I can't put down the idea that a series of books (Twilight or Harry Potter) can affect such a significant change in reading habits across an entire generation. I truly want to believe that a well-told story can change the world. Is there a solution in there for locking in new readers and bringing back those we have lost?
I echo MIchael's comment and will add something, which is that instant gratification not only has eroded patience, it has also eroded distress tolerance writ large.
Distress tolerance is required for reading long-form text and even long-form audio, such as podcasts. I have what I would consider a good attention span (always have, I was a voracious reader since like age 6), but have even found myself so eager to consume information in a quick manner that I listen or watch content at 1.5x or 1.75x. And it's not just me, it's my similarly aged colleagues and ripples up the generational ladder as well.
Amazon deliveries, Door Dash, streaming services, on-demand [whatever], have all helped create this mess, probably beginning with frozen TV dinners and the VCR. It's not just the internet and 15-second sound bites, but our entire society that has accelerated to the point that we no longer enjoy the process, but instead just want to leap to the outcome. For what it's worth, I believe that this entitlement has led to a lack of gratitude as well, which has a whole bag of problems associated with it as well.
Furthermore, it is showing up in spades across the counseling realm in clinically significnant ways. Unless we get Gen X parents (the original participation trophy kids who were taught to avoid distress) to change their ways, subsequent generations will continue down this path, yielding an entire society full of Cluster B-looking adults who throw tantrums when they don't get their way.
Anything that is not natural and requires effort, like reading, will always be prey to distraction (i.e. entertainment), to which children will naturally turn because it requires little effort.
Before the internet, reading for pleasure was itself a distraction. In other words, it’s what you turned to when you had time to kill or wanted to get lost in a good story. So, reading for pleasure became a habit (as I discuss in my book, Life Before the Internet).
Then along came TV (and before that, radio), probably the first major form of distraction from reading. But its effect was limited because you could only watch TV at home at certain times, which meant that reading still had a place in children’s lives.
But the arrival of the smartphone and social media, which essentially put entertainment in one’s pocket, signalled the ultimate in distraction. Try competing against that with reading books – good luck!
So the culprit is hiding in plain sight – it’s the smartphone in Gen Z’s pocket, which they grew up with, and which gradually weaned them off reading.
Here's my analysis.
1) At the most basic level—over this approximately fifty-year time period—book reading has become a less satisfying activity than alternatives, such as TV, film, video games, social media. In short, teens have better non-book alternatives now. One solution is to write better books and encouraging parents to restrict alternatives. Writing better books is easier said than done however, because the profit motive pulls the best writers toward the biggest profits, and the biggest profits are not in books. Writing for TV and film pays better. So how do we write better books with less relative pay for book authors? We'll need to appeal to the prestige, patriotism and virtue of writing excellent books. We might think of this as a religious or moral undertaking.
2) At a more sophisticated level—book reading has been crowded out by college admissions preparation, i.e. resume/application padding. This is harder to see in the data however because the statistic of "average number of hours spent on homework" is probably hiding important information about the high-, middle- and low-performing students. Let's start by focussing on the top students. We know from experience that the top high school students are now taking-on enormous class loads, sometimes three or four AP classes per year--on top of three or four other classes per year. See these school profiles. Call the office and speak to a counselor to figure out what's going on.
Saratoga High Profile
classes.https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1695407878/lgsuhsdorg/zvew25btmqsovmm8lytm/SHS_School_Profile_2023-2024_09122023_6_1.pdf
Palo Alto High Profile
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1666201564/pausdorg/igttewlvt3bcaqcmroum/school_profile_paly.pdf
These AP classes have significantly more homework and reading than classes in the seventies and eighties. These classes simply did not exist 50 years ago and have gradually increased in number since then. Top students are also doing more extracurriculars to boost their college applications, e.g. sports, clubs, music, etc. Top students don't have much time leftover for pleasure reading after a full day of school, extracurriculars and AP/honors classes. They need downtime. TV can be a great way to relax. Similarly they need to connect with other humans. They need love from their families and affirmation from their friends. So after a long day of work, what are top students choosing to do? Family, friends and TV are top choices; probably social media too. They also need sleep. You might consider looking at how sleep deprived they are. Call around to pediatricians in Los Gatos, Cupertino, Saratoga and Palo Alto and you'll hear about it.
At the other end of the spectrum, the middle- and lower-performing students are probably doing less homework than they did in the seventies and eighties, but at top schools, I would bet all students are doing more. How is your "average hours spent on homework" calculated? At schools in low-income neighborhoods the homework hours have probably dropped or stayed the same. For these students, academic standards and workloads have probably fallen. These students also have much better non-book alternatives, e.g. streaming TV, hundreds of shows to watch, a dozen social media options, including YouTube.
Also school sports and school spirit are much more intense and important than in the seventies and eighties. So for the average student, time spent on school-oriented stuff has probably increased over the fifty-year period. See this Los Gatos High School video to get a feel for the CRAZY amount of school spirit at some high schools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkwUix8RE0k
In order to make the basketball team at most high schools, it takes a year round commitment--summer league, private camps, personal trainers. Sports have become the centerpiece of most high schools—taking precedence over academics. Walk into the lobby of any high school and you'll see the vast array of trophy cases, player portraits, mascots paintings, posters and championship banners. See this Los Gatos High School website. It looks like a college athletics website: https://losgatosathletics.com
Likewise there is a great deal more focus on band, cheer, dance, debate, clubs, etc. This focus on sports and extracurriculars takes away from reading books. Why is this happening? It's all about padding the resume for college admissions. The stakes and status for college admission have become so high that students are pouring most of their time and energy into admissions preparation. Do college admissions incentivize reading outside of class assignments? Nope.
On average then—i.e. for the “average student”—the amount of time spent on homework has stayed constant because the top student are spending much more time on homework and the middle- and low-performing students are spending much less on homework, especially in low-income communities. Thus the "average" statistics that you're dealing with are hiding important information about what students are actually doing regarding school related activities.
I suggest visiting high schools and talking to real students. It should become apparent what’s going on.
How do we encourage more reading? See the above analysis and do the opposite. Again easier said than done because the incentives are driving students to take the above actions. So how do we change the incentives?
- Less focus on school sports and more focus on regular exercise.
- Less focus on school spirit.
- Less focus on AP classes and more focus on independent reading.
- Less focus on cognitive skills for college admissions and more focus on excellent moral character through reading.
- Less TV, internet and video games.
- Be physically present with your children. Remember to love them.
- Assign 1500 pages of independent reading per semester. Students choose their own books and are responsible for reading for 30 minutes each day. When they complete a book, they notify the teacher. She verifies that they actually read the book by interviewing them for 5-7 minutes.
- Promote school choice and private school options that cater to niche student interests. These schools will naturally curate better reading options for schools.
-Get away from the one-size-fits all public high school model.
-Encourage colleges to include an "independent reading" questions on admissions essays. This might take the form of a Zoom interview in which student provide a list of their independent reading and the interviewer will verify a sufficient sample from their list.
-Cut funding to public schools and colleges so private ventures aren't crowded out.
-Eliminate tax breaks to college athletics.
-Encourage reading and book discussion on Substack.
All of the comments here make a lot of sense! Im going to add a few more that werent mentioned. Im 48 years old. I have 3 daughters age 21, 11, and 9. The oldest born in 2002.
#1) 70's- 90's decline... did u consider our parents got divorced, mothers went back to work, and we became latch key kids? That had a profound effect on my reading. Even compared to my 10 year older sister. My mom had degrees from 3 ivy's in english but after the divorce when I was 7 no one spent the time with me to make reading a "thing". On top of that I became anxious and all that so as an adult i was diagnosed ADHD which could be nature or nurture they say. I know this is a personal annecdote but in my generation this was more the norm than the exception. EVERYONE'S moms and dads worked, and lots of divorce made for chaos and using outdoor time and tv as a babysitter. We certainly played more than kids do now. Outdoor time wasnt a bad thing. But in the 80's/90's there werent a lot of parents around modeling downtime. Then increasingly parents felt bad about leaving the kids to fend for themselves so my generation shrink wraps them. Still no modeling reading. It must be modeled.
#2) Phonics. When they stopped teaching phonics for 10 years GenZ was in preschool. My kid got no phonics and was placed in a special reading program. We are in an affluent well educated diatrict. This was a national experiment that is changing back to phonics now (my 2 little girls went to private school with phonics and are lightyears ahead of where my oldest was in 3rd and 5th grades). The effects of the anti-phonics debacle may be masked by tech and phones though. Phonics started to be reintroduced around 2017-2020. Already that gen Z was lost. I actually homeschooled my genZ daughter in 6th grade because her reading was at a very low level and she has absolutely no cognitive issues. I was stumped until I started digging into her curriculum from kindergarten. I wasnt paying attention until we got her evaluated and she had no issues. During our one homeschool year we went to book conventions all over the country. She became a voratious reader in one year. That brings me to the next point...
#3) it wasnt just Potter! Twilight, Percy Jackson, Maze Runner, Hunger Games, Diary of a Whimpy Kid, Sarah J Maas books... SO many YA books exploded on the scene. Book Cons were a massive phenomenon! I dont think people appreciate how cultish it was from 2010-2015 in part because in those years phones/social media and YA books complemented each other. For a short time YA books/film/and social media were new, GOOD, exciting, and social. Booktube was a HUGE phenomenon. BLM, political organizing, trans, mental diagnoses, those things werent "in" yet. Reading lists werent political. Now everything is about subversively reading "banned" books (the banned list is assigned reading in our middle school) and anti-whiteness literature. Kids are afraid to read the "wrong" morally prescribed books so they often just read none. And I dont mean they arent still rebellious against adults. I mean, they are afraid to read certain things because of peer pressure. That's actually really sad. There isnt a lot of "omg did you read this new book??" anymore. And certain authors are not getting published or promoted. Its a very wierd time! Im living this twice with the same sex kids in the same school district and its STARKLY different where books are concerned. A racial justice church group donated 100 copies of Ibram X Khendi's Stamped book to our elementary libraries (600 kids). There are "marginalized" sections placed at the front of every library in our district. And 2 of our 5 librarians have been cut in exchange for DEI programs. Im a liberal... and this is over the top. (Here's a taste of what happened to booktube https://bookriot.com/booktube-according-to-booktubers/)
So all things combined I think there are social forces that were swimming in the same current as tech and then hit a hurricane when tech exploded.
For some reason I can't put down the idea that a series of books (Twilight or Harry Potter) can affect such a significant change in reading habits across an entire generation. I truly want to believe that a well-told story can change the world. Is there a solution in there for locking in new readers and bringing back those we have lost?