Why Reading Is Falling Out of Favour, and What’s Going on in Young Minds
Reading to children was once a default part of family life. Not a strategy. Not an intervention. Just something you did. Today, it’s increasingly an unpopular activity, not because parents don’t care, but because reading now competes with something far more powerful: technology engineered to capture attention effortlessly.
Reading vs. Technology: An Unequal Battle
Reading is cognitively demanding. Even picture books require sustained attention, imagination, patience, and interaction. Screens, on the other hand, do the work for the brain.
Modern digital platforms are:
Instantly rewarding
Visually saturated
Algorithmically personalised
Designed to minimise effort and maximise engagement
For a tired parent or a restless child, the choice is understandable. A tablet doesn’t need time, energy, or emotional presence. It doesn’t ask for dialogue or repetition. It never gets bored. Over time, this shifts habits. Reading starts to feel slow. Hard. Optional. And slowly, it disappears from daily routines.
What This Means for the Developing Brain
This shift isn’t neutral. From a neurological perspective, reading and screen consumption activate the brain very differently.
Reading aloud and shared storytelling help develop:
Language networks and vocabulary depth
Working memory and sequencing skills
Empathy and emotional regulation
Attention span and mental endurance
Screens, especially fast-paced or algorithm-driven ones, tend to:
Prioritise rapid novelty over sustained focus
Train the brain to expect constant stimulation
Reduce tolerance for boredom — a key ingredient for learning
Weaken deep comprehension pathways
When children are exposed primarily to passive or fast-switching media, the brain adapts. Neural circuits optimise for reacting, not reflecting. This makes later learning, especially reading, writing, and complex thinking, feel harder and less rewarding.
The Attention Problem Starts Early
One of the most overlooked consequences of reduced reading is its effect on attention development. Reading builds attentional stamina. It teaches children to stay with a narrative, tolerate ambiguity, and mentally visualise what isn’t shown.
Without this practice:
Children struggle to sit with longer texts
Learning becomes more fragmented
Instructions are harder to follow
Frustration increases more quickly
Teachers increasingly report that students don’t lack intelligence, they lack attention endurance. This isn’t a character flaw. It’s a developmental outcome.
When Reading Becomes “Schoolwork”
Another reason reading loses appeal is that it has been reframed as performance.
When reading is reduced to:
Levelled readers
Comprehension tests
Accelerated points
Correct answers
… the joy drains out of it.
Children sense when reading is about measurement rather than meaning. If their earliest encounters with books feel evaluative or pressured, they’re less likely to associate reading with comfort, curiosity, or pleasure. Screens, meanwhile, offer escape without judgement.
The Long-Term Cost: Learning and Maturation
Reading isn’t just about literacy. It’s about maturing as a thinker and a human.
Through stories, children practice:
Perspective-taking
Cause and consequence
Moral reasoning
Emotional nuance
When reading declines, these capacities don’t disappear, but they develop more slowly and unevenly.
The result? Learners who may be digitally fluent, but struggle with:
Complex problem-solving
Deep understanding
Self-regulation
Independent thinking
Why This Still Matters
This isn’t a call to reject technology. Screens are here to stay. But reading offers something technology cannot replicate: a slow, relational, cognitively rich experience that shapes the brain for learning itself. In a world of endless stimulation, reading teaches children how to stay, with a thought, a feeling, a question.
And that may be one of the most important skills they’ll ever learn. ❤️
