Books Aren't Boring: The Real Reason No One Reads Anymore

Books Aren't Boring: The Real Reason No One Reads Anymore

It’s more than obvious that fewer and fewer people have been reading books, especially teenagers. This is often blamed on things like social media and cell phones decreasing attention spans and providing instant dopamine. While this is partially true, it’s not the only reason. When was the last time you saw a teenager reading a book for fun, rather than just for a school assignment? How often are books and reading associated with school rather than pleasure? It seems as though the real culprit here isn’t phones, but the school system. 

When we were in pre-school, books were for fun; our teachers would read them to us and make the voices of the characters and even act out the scenes. Most of you maybe even had a book that you couldn’t “read” yet but you had memorized it from all the times an adult read it to you for fun. But once we started to learn to read on our own, very quickly our interaction with books changed. We’re taught that books are something you read in school and for school. We’re taught to read books for school assignments, then we’re taught to analyze books and write essays about them. Even books assigned as pleasure reading are given deadlines and page requirements, which makes the reading stressful instead of enjoyable. As a result, books become associated with school, and school quickly becomes associated with a boring, work-like setting. 

I have been lucky enough to have a few English teachers who have given us students time to just read a book for fun. Not everyone is so fortunate, and many students have hardly ever read a book simply to enjoy it. I myself am guilty of falling into that habit. The last time I read a book that wasn’t for a school assignment was over a year ago. Like many high schoolers, I don’t have time to read more than I’m assigned, because I have massive amounts of other work that I’m juggling too. High schoolers have homework from every class; extracurriculars; work; responsibilities and chores at home; for some, driver’s ed; and any other number of things to take up their time. On top of all of that, it’s nearly impossible to work in a book to read just for fun. Most teenagers wouldn’t default to reading as a way to spend their rare bits of free time anyway, seeing how associated with school they’ve become. 

This is not to say that school can take the entirety of the blame. Reading for fun is something that has to be done voluntarily, it can’t be forced. If someone doesn’t want to read, there’s no way to make them. Sure, maybe phones, the internet, and short-form video content are partially the reason. Who wouldn’t want instant dopamine? But that doesn’t mean they’re the only thing causing this. Often, the default for any issue involving teens is to put the blame on cell phones when, in reality, many teens aren’t as phone addicted as they’re made out to be. The idea of a screen-addicted teenager who shuts out the rest of the world to spend all their time on their phone is extremely stereotypical and reduces teenagers down to a piece of technology. There are definitely teenagers who would rather spend time scrolling on TikTok than reading a book, but the fault for that lands on TikTok just as much as it lands on the education system that didn’t continue to teach them reading could be enjoyable. 

So, what’s the solution? It’s not like we can just flip a switch and have kids start reading for fun again. And it would be unreasonable to only focus on reading for fun since developing analytical skills is very important as well both in academics and in our future careers. (Though, I personally have fun analyzing things.) But there’s no rule that says we can’t have a happy medium. From a young age, children can be taught both how to read for schoolwork and how to read for fun. Not every single book read in school has to have an assignment tied to it, especially in the younger grades. As students get older, there can gradually be fewer and fewer books that are assigned to read simply for fun, since there are valuable skills to be learned from looking deeply into a classic work. However, that doesn’t mean that reading for fun just goes away. Students should always be encouraged to have a book that they’re reading for fun and be given time to read that book. If space is made for kids to read, they will read.