Issue 6: Reading versus Scrolling

Reading is the undisputed champion of intellectual development.  My colleagues in the Secondary School have happily provided a flurry of supporting evidence for this claim.  There are a significant number of studies which demonstrate the growth in vocabulary as a result of reading and its associated link to ‘end of school’ grades.  Mol and Bus (2011) call this an ‘upward spiral of causality’ in which a student’s exposure to print media from a young age causes an increasing proficiency in oral communication skills beyond the expected parallel progression as students move through to the end of their schooling.  In addition, Mrs Washington directed me to Seifert (2020) who in the Harvard Business Review links the development of communication, flexible thinking, self-control and many other skills deemed increasingly important in the world beyond our walls directly to the reading of both fiction and non-fiction.  Finally Fry, Elkins and Farrell (2023) connect curiosity and problem-solving in the workplace back to reading levels in the teenage years.  Reading is our champion.  No other (potentially easy and enjoyable) habit has such an impact upon the indicators we currently consider as success markers in our students both now and into their future.  Yet our champion is on the ropes.

A longitudinal Swedish study into the potential decline in reading found that between 2007 and 2017 the number of students who reported not reading even a single page of something each day increased significantly (Vinterek et al, 2022).  Furthermore, the same study highlights a growing achievement gap between students who still read ‘something’ each day compared to those who read nothing at all.  It does not take a significant stretch of the imagination to correlate this decline in reading in the decade from 2007 to 2017 with an associated rise in scrolling.  While there is substantial evidence for the benefits of reading there is scant data on how we best capture some of the hours spent scrolling to wrest back some time for reading.  Research outlines the potential pitfalls of scrolling versus the benefits of reading but there is little significant research on how to shift the adolescent motivation from one to the other.  Accordingly, I popped the question out to some of my colleagues to seek their counsel on how we build reading as a habit over scrolling.  They were unanimous in their belief that (particularly for teens) scrolling is by far the more immediately attractive option.  As such, any move away from scrolling must be intentional and sometimes enforced.  Ms Forbes-Ewan, Ms Forbes, Ms Meyers and Ms Slabosz all proclaimed the benefits of reading aloud every night as a means of habit formation from a young age.  I can only add to this that a ‘young age’ does not necessarily mean primary school and could extend well into teens and beyond.  This speaks to Ms Kimlin’s perspective that sometimes we parents need to be the potential ‘baddie’ and dictate terms around screen-free time as a means of providing time for reading. 

If we accept that (at times) we must be the ‘baddie’ in the limiting of scrolling in our households then accordingly there should be a time when we are the ‘goodie’ – and surely this is in the promotion of reading as beneficial for ourselves.  Mr Bockman reinforces this perspective by stressing the importance of the display of reading as a habit – regardless of the content of the reading.  Similarly, all staff highlighted the centrality of one significant detail in the war to ‘read’ over ‘scroll’ …that we must model reading ourselves.  Cubillos (2023) found that when all other variables in a child’s education were experimentally controlled then children whose parents were regular readers were more likely to become readers themselves.  So how do we encourage the reluctant reader to maintain the practice of reading rather than divert to scrolling?  Elish-Piper and Killian (2016) provide a relatively straightforward and realistic paradigm.  In essence their suggestions fall under three key principles: embrace your child’s interests, provide role models for reading and encourage all forms of reading and writing.  They contend that there is no magic formula to have a student’s reading increase but rather it grows from a combination of many factors; however, if we expect our children to read then they must see us reading.  We cannot expect that our children will see the joy in turning a page if they do not see us invested in a book rather in our own devices.

References

Cubillos, M. (2023). A Chip Off the Old Block: Do Reading‐Motivated Parents Raise Reading‐Motivated Children? Reading Research Quarterly, 58(4), 668–684.

Elish-Piper, L., & Killian, L. (2016). Parent Involvement in Reading. Illinois Reading Council Journal, 44(3), 43–47.

Fry, J., Elkins, M., & Farrell, L. (2023). Cognition and curiosity:Strategies for firms to recruit curious employees. Applied Economics, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2023.2174943

Haynes, T. (2018, May 1). Dopamine, smartphones & you: A battle for your time. Science in the News; Harvard University. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/

Mol, S. E., & Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2), 267–296. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021890

Seifert, C. (2020, March 6). The Case for Reading Fiction. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-case-for-reading-fiction

Vinterek, M., Winberg, M., Tegmark, M., Alatalo, T., & Liberg, C. (2022). The Decrease of School Related Reading in Swedish Compulsory School – Trends Between 2007 and 2017. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 66(1), 119–133.