The Alarming Decline of READING Habits: How Screen Time is Affecting Mental Health, Productivity, and Empathy

The number of books that adults read every year continues to drop. According to Gallup polling the average adult reads fewer books now than the average adult read before 1990 at twelve books in 2021; in 2023 that number again has dropped to ten. However, one interesting statistic shows that although the sales of books have also decreased, the decrease in sales is not nearly at the rate of the decline of books read, which suggests that people want to be well-read, but they don’t read. There’s an underlying reason for this, but the reason has permeated and interwoven our behaviors and habits and is ultimately changing who we are at our core.

Much of the time we would otherwise spend reading is sacrificed for time spent scrolling, and our ability to concentrate for longer periods is becoming increasingly rare. Reading opens and expands our minds and introduces new ways of thinking and experiencing the world, scrolling not only does the exact opposite for us, narrowing our thought processes and our focus but also negatively influences our self-esteem, negatively affects our sleep, negatively affects our attention span and productivity (and is addictive), and increases anxiety and depression.

The side effects of poor self-esteem, lack of sleep, decreased attention spans, addiction, anxiety, and depression include (because remember side effects have side effects that weave into our psyche and influence us well beyond those more immediate symptoms): headaches, fatigue, muscle tension, digestive issues, irritability, restlessness, difficulty concentrating, increased worry and fear, appetite, persistent sadness, loss of interest, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, self-doubt, fear of failure, difficulty making decisions, increased sensitivity to criticism, respiratory issues, memory problems, mood disturbances, increased stress, impaired judgment, and nervous other nervous system issues.

Interestingly, the same escalation of symptoms in Americans correlates with increased screen time and decreased reading time. And yet, most people knowingly sacrifice their health and well-being for the illusion of immediate gratification (On a personal note, as a society our focus is impaired, we’re not doing well [collectively] emotionally and there needs to be a shift in the way that we approach health, well-being, and correlatively mental illness). It’s fascinating how something as seemingly mundane as reading can help redirect us into a healthier place.

            In the United States, teaching reading has been a fundamental aspect of our education, early literacy programs, such as phonics instruction and sight word recognition, are commonly used to help children develop essential reading skills. For the most part, the United States has decent Beginner’s Reading Programs, but our education system and home lives are not doing nearly enough to encourage children to want to read, to foster a love for books is crucial for their—well, for our—intellectual development.

Providing access to assorted authors and books, creating cozy reading spaces, reading aloud to children, and helping children discover—by their efforts alone—how to find authors and books that interest them are a few effective ways to instill a passion for reading. We all know why reading is important, I don’t need to list here how reading expands vocabulary, enhances language skills, improves focus and concentration, boosts imagination and creativity, and enhances empathy and understanding of others (a lot of people seem to be afraid of this right now for some reason).

I enjoyed reading when I was a child but not necessarily because of the stories I was reading, I enjoyed reading because thoughtlessly reading the meaningless words in succession allowed my brain to flow, it was a kind of meditation, and I desperately needed that. I wouldn’t start to care about the actual benefits of reading or the enjoyment of it until later when things like ‘reviewing key points,’ ‘discussing what I got out of it and the general material with others,’ and ‘reflecting on the points or main ideas,’ you know basic reading comprehension, started to interest me. Comprehending what I was reading was a form of education better than anything the public education system could offer me; I wouldn’t have to “drop $150,000 on an education you could have got for $1.50 in late charges at a public library.”

But the impacts of reading are far greater than the reading comprehension, the developed vocabulary, the language skills, there are these things that we learn in life act as seeds and grow and blossom into emotional strengths developing real-life, practical, and intuitive applications that enhance our society. Now everybody, go and visit my bookstore and start buying my books. I’m kidding, that’s not why I’m writing this; my books are a passion, but they are not my passion, writing is, and how sharing my experiences through writing can help someone who might need to hear it. The more you read the better you get at reading, and the more you’ll enjoy reading.

You’ll want to visit bookstores (I recommend your local, independently-owned bookstore), and actively read, if you come across words you don’t know to take a break from reading and look that word up (or write the words down and revisit them later), read silently out loud, allow your lips to move while your reading to yourself, this improves comprehension and shortens the time between the advancement of reading levels, helping you to learn to read faster. Think about a sentence after you read it. Did something about it strike you: how well it was written, how poorly, was it beautiful (I stop to enjoy sentences, and one writer in particular that I find myself doing this the most often with is Don DeLillo (The Body Artist, White Noise, Libra, Cosmopolis, Underworld), imagine the author writing that sentence, and think about the importance of the sentence concerning the rest of the book.

I read Goosebumps when I was young. I had collected the entire series until I felt I had outgrown them. Many of those titles, especially the earlier ones, Welcome to Dead House, Stay Out of the Basement, Monster Blood, Say Cheese and Die! Etc., acted as a reading meditation, until I started enjoying myself reading these books. I discovered, shortly after, the books of Gary Paulsen: Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and others, and I found the desire to read. And not simply to read but to want to read and discover new authors and titles that I would enjoy reading. Too many people are reading books they have no interest in, maybe someone suggested a title, and perhaps a title is on a reading list, but for whatever reason people pick up a book and drudge through it reluctantly—stop doing that, there’s no reason for it, but find something else. We need to be a culture of readers; reading, among the many, many benefits, teaches us the importance of not only opening ourselves up to a profusion of ideas, beliefs, behaviors, processes, intentions, goals, mistakes, and possibilities out there but also how to accept that you can be aware of and accepting of a thing without believing in and advocating for a thing.