“It’s those darn phones!”
For years now, parents and educators have been increasingly anxious about the negative effects of cellphones on children and teens. Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory on social media and the potential harms it can cause, including a study showing that teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media are at double the risk for anxiety and depression. These effects are widespread; 11% of adolescents reported addiction-like behavior in social media use.
These troubling statistics have catalyzed calls for change. In his recent book, “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt articulates the long-festering public-health crisis and sparks a movement for policy responses across the United States. Since its publication, schools and policymakers across the country have begun to crackdown on cellphone use in schools, enacting bans and strengthening their enforcement policies.
Americans increasingly believe that social media is harmful and should not be used as much as it is now. The rise in awareness around the mental health dangers presented by social media is applaudable and reassuring, but another side effect of high social media use has commanded less awareness: shortened attention spans. Teens and young adults seem increasingly unable to read books — or any long-form work — for schoolwork or enjoyment. The result? A decrease in reading ability and critical thinking skills that may be contributing to a global rise in extremism.
In order to combat rising extremism and political polarization, it is essential that parents instill a love of reading in their children. Reading with and to children promotes empathy and critical thinking during key developmental stages — and a generation of children who love to read might be what the world needs to heal current political fissures.
Reading is like taking a multivitamin for your brain. The pastime has been shown to improve comprehension, logical reasoning, critical thinking, memory, and vocabulary. Reading is a foundational skill that is often a predictor of student achievement and widely seen as the yardstick by which the strength of an education is measured. Current studies show that only about 2% of Americans read with their children on an average day, even though reading to children — bedtime stories, essentially — leads to higher literacy rates and children who grow up to love reading. Simultaneously, reading scores for K-12 students have been on the decline in the past few years. Fewer and fewer young people are entering the world equipped with the skills necessary for civic engagement and critical thinking. Coupled with the explosive introduction of social media into the lives of modern adolescents, a pattern emerges of young people increasingly turning away from activities that encourage critical thinking and towards the rapid-fire, uncritical engagement promoted by social media. Encouraging children to thoughtfully engage with the world around them through reading more books could increase the critical thinking skills necessary for society to fight illiberal movements.
Global politics are undergoing a draining of critical thinking and moderation. Authoritarianism — and a concurrent lack of empathy — is on the rise. Around the world, young people are increasingly supporting politicians who engage in extremist, authoritarian rhetoric aimed at inflaming divisions and promoting hatred. The most popular forms of social media today — TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube — all utilize short-form videos in some way to disseminate content to viewers. The rush of mental and emotional stimulation that accompanies a viral political video contributes to getting users hooked: The more time they spend on social media, the more inflammatory political content they consume, and the more extreme their beliefs become.
Social media monetization has created a vicious circle in which provocative content is rewarded with more views, and thus more money. Content creators prey on consumers’ emotions and sense of right and wrong to feed them a diet of extremism in short, dopamine-powered bursts. Where reading encourages us to slow down, social media encourages us to speed up — and deprioritize critical thinking.
Reading expands a person’s ability to see themself in another person’s shoes. It also encourages deep thought and revision before making public statements, and forces a person to take their time when consuming or creating a publicly-available statement or opinion. If more people started to identify as readers — as people who see the innate value in reading and writing long-form work like books — the global political scene might look very different today.
As this generation is forced to reckon with a global shortage of empathy, leaders must make teaching empathy to children a priority. The easiest way to do this is to promote a resurgence of readers in the next generation. Every book is a window into another person’s life. Every time a child is read a bedtime story, a lesson in empathy is taught, and a future reader is born.
Associate Culture Editor
