Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

Posted by m-hodges 1 hour ago

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Comment by znpy 1 hour ago

I don’t believe it’s purely “screen time” but rather a mix of what is on that screen as well as the standard that students are kept on at school.

I used to come back from school and spend my day in front of the computer (crt screen and everything) but my screen time was much higher quality that modern day kids. Also, back in my day there was no moronic “no child left behind” kind of policy: if you needed to repeat a year of school, you just did. It felt harsh in the moment but looking back oh boy it was the correct thing to do.

Comment by techblueberry 44 minutes ago

“if you needed to repeat a year of school, you just did. It felt harsh in the moment but looking back oh boy it was the correct thing to do.”

Was it really? My read of the research is its mixed at best, and most effective at younger grades with targeted interventions.

I never repeated a grade though, is your assertion based on experience or how are we defining “correct”?

Comment by m-hodges 1 hour ago

Yeah, I didn’t read a lot of books in high school (do read a lot more books as an adult!), but I did read a lot of information while sitting at a desktop computer.

Comment by rdm_blackhole 41 minutes ago

Teen reading slumps because the students are no longer forced to read enough to break through to the other side where reading becomes a pleasure.

It's like anything hard really. If you start learning how to play music, well the first few years are going to suck because you are not going to be a very good player, you won't be able to read the notes on the music sheets, you'll have to stop, restart and practice again and again until finally everything comes together and you start playing better and actually enjoying yourself.

But these days, the kids complain that the books are too boring or too long and then the parents complain because they don't have time to make sure the kids are doing their reading, in fact they don't even read to their kids anymore or barely.

Then the government changes the school program to include less reading and the cycles starts over.

The less the kids read, the less they'll want to read and that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and of course, we should ban phones,tablets and computers in school so that the kids stop being distracted constantly.