We need to get children off their phones and reading again
12 September 2024, 08:05
Children’s reading rates have hit rock bottom - we need to get our kids back into reading for pleasure.
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I was never a bookworm growing up. My parents love books, which is probably why I always avoided them if I could.
A typical Saturday afternoon looked like this: Dad’s reading Great Gatsby for the hundredth time while Mum is flicking between the Financial Times and the new Sally Rooney book. My brother is on his fifth Harry Potter book of the day and I’m still pretending to enjoy Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
I have always liked the idea of reading and having books in the house, but I never enjoyed the process of reading and only did it because I had to.
That stayed the same until the start of lockdown, when I realised how much I enjoyed reading political non-fiction.
Armed with a strong coffee, I spent hours in my armchair, devouring Brexit thrillers and tales of Blair and Thatcher in Downing Street.
When I started out reading, the hardest thing was managing to put my phone away for ten minutes. Gradually, I was able to manage a whole chapter without checking my social media notifications.
It’s ridiculous that I had become so addicted to my phone that I couldn’t manage 30 pages unplugged from my devices.
After a while, the political biographies started to blend into one, so I ventured into other non-fiction categories. Soon, I was reading about the lives of prison governors, tales of the man who cycled the world and surgeons who conduct heart transplants.
Only recently have I wandered into the fiction section of the bookshop. I enjoyed David Nicholls’ ‘One Day’ after its Netflix adaptation and Robert Rinder’s fiction about criminal justice is excellent too.
As I write this, I can’t stop thinking about all the books I’ve read and enjoyed. I want to go back and experience them all over again.
I never had this excitement as a child. When I saw my primary school classmates buzzing about their latest read, I could never understand how they felt like this.
Lots of children are having the same experience now. The latest National Literacy Trust (NLT) study, released last year, found that over half of young people aged 8-18 don’t enjoy reading in their free time.
This statistic has decreased by 26% since 2005, when the survey began. This all-time low statistic should shame the education system.
The charity said last year that the results must “act as a wake-up call for all who support children’s reading for pleasure.”
Martin Galway, from the NLT said that “we need to give them every opportunity possible to fall in love with reading, and to give families and schools the support they need to put reading for enjoyment at the heart of every school and home.”
Galway is right to reference both school and home. Reading needs to take place in both environments.
Parents should be encouraged to read to their children more and kids should be given the time and space for their own private reading.
The crucial thing to remember is that children won’t want to read if you tell them they must. We need to create an environment where they can learn to love reading naturally.
We’re never going to get every child to love books, but we can do a much better job than we are now.
Anyway, back to my latest read: a book about the rise of conspiracy theorists in America.
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