My philosophy on encouraging my children to read has been simple: Read to them, read with them and leave good books around the house.
And it worked well with my older two children, one of whom carried a backpack through Europe this summer made heavier by beloved books so he could reread “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in Spain and Kafka in Germany. As an elementary school student, my daughter was such a frequent customer at a local mall bookstore, the staff would let her sit on the floor in the back of the store and read the newest arrivals on Saturday afternoons.
But those kids, now twentysomethings, came of age in what I now call the BC era in our household, before computers. Yes, we had a bulky PC the size of a dorm fridge that we all shared, but my son’s and daughter’s time on it was limited to playing “Oregon Trail” or “SimCity.”
Unlike their younger siblings, their computer amblings did not yet lead to Facebook, Instagram, iFunny and YouTube.
What a difference eight years, social networks and Wi-Fi make.
Six months ago, we bought our twins refurbished Macs because their middle school assignments and projects increasingly contained online components. My husband and I had work laptop computers that were off limits to the kids. Our ancient family computer was on life support. The twins would type language arts essays or create science PowerPoints only to have the computer go into death throes and swallow their work.
In the midst of posting on my AJC education blog, Get Schooled, my 13-year-olds would come pleading for 15 minutes to finish researching desertification or practice Spanish vocabulary on Quizlet.
Their own computers brought peace but too much quiet. Family conversations dwindled to, “Where’s my power cord?”
Worse, their recreational reading fell off. It is hard to persevere with “Old Yeller” when Facebook offers that heart-wrenching video of the rescue of a blind homeless dog.
How can reading “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” compare with watching “Charlie Bit My Finger,” the YouTube amateur video that drew 550 million page views? (The two young British brothers — who reportedly earned more than a half-million dollars from the viral video — now have fan clubs, a line of T-shirts and a Ragu commercial to their credit.)
A 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that children ages 8 to 18 devote an average of 7 hours 38 minutes each day to using entertainment media — more than 53 hours a week.
When “tweeners,” ages 11 to 14, are pulled out, the picture intensifies. According to the study: Media use increases substantially when children hit the 11-14 age group, an increase of 82 minutes with TV content, 74 minutes with music, an hour using the computer, and nearly a half-hour playing video games, for total media exposure of 11 hours 53 minutes per day.
In addition, students in grades 7 to 12 spend an average of 1 hour 35 minutes a day sending or receiving texts — which is not counted as media use in the study.
All this time given over to screens and smartphones has to come from somewhere, and I suspect research will someday show that a lot of it came from reading for fun.
Not only do kids not have enough time to read for pleasure, they apparently don’t have enough time to play games. Remember rainy afternoons spent playing an endless game of Monopoly? A shorter version of the iconic game was just released for kids on the go; it is designed to last about as long as a summer shower, 30 minutes.
In my district, students returned to classes last week. At the open house two days earlier, I heard dozens of teens complain that they hadn’t yet finished the mandatory summer reading and reports that were due on the first day of classes.
They only had to read two books.
This is not just a problem with kids. Friends lament the time they fritter away on Facebook. A few weeks back, I saw an entire family hiking in North Georgia and both the parents and the kids were regularly consulting their phones as if they were awaiting life-altering medical test results or news of an alien attack. Shopping for back-to-school clothes last week, I noticed dozens of smart phone-toting mother-child duos who never looked up — or at each other.
We all know what the answer is: Limit how much time kids spend on computers and smart phones. Tell them to disconnect from the TV and the smartphones and the tablets. Give them a book. The problem is that children learn from example, and I am not sure that we parents are willing to unplug, either.
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