This one is for the young people. Are you consumed with social skirmishes emanating from the phone in your pocket? Exhausted by scrolling through posts, even after they’ve become a bore?
Consider a cure beloved throughout history for combating loneliness, unhappiness or just the wish to step out of your life for a bit: Read a book.
It may feel awkward and, likely, unfamiliar. That’s understandable. Your reading muscles have probably atrophied. Only 14% of 13-year-olds read for fun these days, less than half the rate 20 years ago, when about 30% said they found it enjoyable to read every day.
It’s not entirely your fault. Most elementary and middle-school teachers no longer assign whole books because they don’t think students have developed the necessary stamina to get through one. More than half of third- through eighth-grade teachers nationally say kids’ reading muscles are weaker than just six years ago.
Even the National Council of Teachers of English says, “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.”
But this summer, give books a try anyway. Reading bulks up the circuits in your brain that help with critical thinking, better decision-making and understanding other people, according to scientists. Also, it’s fun. A story that sweeps you away can change your sense of reality during long summer days.
Look, we get it. Even scientists who spend their careers studying reading — including the impact of screens versus paper books — know videos and social media are more immediately engaging. They’re engineered to be.
But they also create a certain passivity, a laxity in our brains.
“This is the last thing we want for child development, because we’re wanting them to learn to focus,” says Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. “Instead, they are learning to be distracted.”
Over at the Seattle Public Library, librarians are doing everything they can to point kids back to books. Their teen book bingo game runs all summer long. It asks young people to read any book they want that meets certain criteria: a graphic novel or memoir; a book about facing fears; a book about “found family”; a banned book; even a book you didn’t finish.
Fill out all the squares by Sept. 2 and you could win a $100 gift card from Elliott Bay Books. You can even put a book on hold to pick up later with the library’s new app. (They are operating in the 21st century, after all.)
By the way, audio books count.
“They’re just another way to get to reading,” says chief librarian Tom Fay. “And that’s what we’re about, fostering that love, or joy, in reading.”
