Comment by decasteve

I read to my two kids every day until they were 13-14 years old. They loved books. Every car ride was an opportunity to listen to an audiobook. The kids loved to write and make arts and crafts as well.

During the pandemic I took my kids out of public school for the first year of it. They went to an outdoor/nature based private school that popped up. It was a part time arrangement. The rest of their week was homeschooling. They read even more and even started doing math problems for fun. I stopped reading to my daughter because she wanted to read her own thing. I continued with my son who is two years younger.

After that year the kids went back to public school. My daughter was of age to go into high school. I was reticent because of the positive experience they just had and how happy my kids were at the time, and the awful experiences other kids were having with being stuck home online trying to have virtual classes at that age. The other kids were in and out of school with masks and sanitizing. Most have bad recollections of that first pandemic year. It was the opposite for us.

When they started high school there was an expectation to be connected via smartphone and social media. Without it, you were socially disconnected. The decline in reading for fun started there. The difficult experiences in high school, like bullying and social pressures to fit in, were amplified by the smartphones. By the time my daughter finished high school she stopped reading for fun entirely. My son is nearing the end of high school and he had similar experiences. They became less physically active, gave up on most sports they used to play.

Although, if I were to say what was the cause, I wouldn’t point to the devices, but the inability for the school system to adapt. The “social” media are gamified, pushing the psychological buttons of not only the kids, but for everyone. There’s the proverbial dopamine hit, toxic engagement, and reaction farming. Kids are potentially carrying a casino, brothel, and drug dealers in their pockets. Adults are having to deal with the same issues themselves. However, kids are in school. There’s an institution in place to guide them.

If we know attention spans and over-use of social media are a problem, the schools can adapt and compensate the other way. Remove it from the equation. Make education more physically hands on, more about training focus and self-discipline. Train them on tasks requiring longer periods of concentration. Go completely non-digital if you have to, or use fixed-in-place desktop computers where needed. Instead, they’ve allowed smartphones and social media to completely dominate the environment.