Gen Z parents aren’t reading to their kids anymore. According to a new survey, young parents have been opting for screen time over story time, which is concerning experts who believe that this will stunt the next generation’s development and education.
Young Gen Z parents are choosing screen time over story time, according to a new study from the UK. A former elementary school teacher named Spencer Russell recently spoke with media publication site The Guardian about a survey he conducted on his social media.
Russell runs an Instagram page called “Toddlers Can Read,” where he offers resources and guidance on helping parents teach their children to read. Through running this page, Russell noticed an unfortunate new trend emerging among young parents: they aren’t reading to their children as much as previous generations, which could be detrimental to a child’s development and overall educational experience as they grow up.
Russell posed the question “Why aren’t you reading aloud to your kids?” to his 2 million followers, and the responses were nothing short of disappointing. He told Alaina Demopoulos of the Guardian that parents said they were, to put it generally, embarrassed, annoyed, angry, and bored when it came to story time.
Some of these responses included “it’s so boring,” “I don’t have time,” and “I don’t enjoy reading.” Others discussed giving up after their kids do what kids do best, get distracted.
“My [child] just wants to skip all the pages. I love reading with my kids, but they request the same book over and over,” one response said. Russell also observed that in our digital age, parents are simply choosing to put a screen in front of their kids face instead of books.
“Screen time is replacing one-on-one, quality interactions between parent and child.”
A recent survey from HarperCollins UK corroborated the responses that Russell received, and emphasized that younger parents are struggling the most when it comes to story time. The survey showed that more than half of gen z parents don’t find reading fun, and one in three view it as a “subject to learn and be enjoyed.”
When it comes to the kids themselves, the survey showed that only one third of five-to10-year-olds frequently read for fun. For comparison, in 2012 over half of kids in that age bracket reported that they read for fun frequently. This has everything to do with the parents opting to read to their kids before the age of five.
In 2012, 64% of parents reported reading to their kids before they turned five, today that percentage has dropped to 41%.
Russell also offers courses through his social media to help parents teach literacy skills to their children when they’re as young as 18 months. He stated that he often gets inquiries from parents of older children who are still struggling to get themselves to read. These kids are as old as 14 and still struggle with reading, showing that kids in the US are having issues.
“We see children who can sit still and focus for hours on YouTube or Miss Rachel, but when you sit them down with a book, they move, wiggle, or scream and run away,” Russell said.
In today’s age, the economy and instability that exists throughout the US makes affording childcare difficult for many new parents. The cost of childcare has risen exponentially in the 21st century. That combined with the way technology is so embedded in our society sets parents up to rely on screens to help them after working all day.
“I don’t think we can divorce the role of technology influencing gen Z parents and their kids with the decline in reading out loud. Screen time is replacing one-on-one, quality interactions between parent and child.”
There’s so many studies and evidence that show that excessive screen time can harm a child’s cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional growth. Doctors from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommend that parents limit “non-educational screen time” to about one hour per weekday and three on the weekends for children aged two to five.
There are many factors that are fuelling the literacy crisis in America, and it’s unfortunately nothing new. Last year, The Atlantic reported that many students at elite colleges had major difficulties when it came to completing English assignments, and it was cited that these same students never read a full book in high school.
The Covid-19 pandemic also did immense damage to overall student performance throughout the US. In math and english specifically, scores in both subjects dropped to their lowest margin in over 30 years. Many teachers also began to post personal PSAs to read to their kids.
Dawna Duff, an associate professor of speech language pathology at SUNY Binghamton University said that kids who don’t get a head start on reading at home when their young have a tough time catching up in their later education.
“Books are a really rich source of learning new words, and if kids don’t have that experience reading at home, they’re likely to come to school knowing less vocabulary – and that makes a big difference in how successful you’re going to be throughout school.”
The President of the American Association of School Libraries, Becky Calzada, recommends that parents present themselves as “reading role models.” She stated that not only does reading help kids learn vocabulary, but it builds their emotional intelligence.
The report from HarperCollins showed that 20% of boys between the age of zero and two are “rarely or never” read to. 44% of girls in the same age group are read to every day, and this impacts both groups in school later on.
Russell understands that in our modern age, YouTube, TV, and other forms of screen time will always be more tantalizing than a book for kids. “[One parent told me] ‘I just don’t have the energy to read to my kid. Me and my wife don’t have a village, so it’s hard to rest.’”
Russell recommends taking it one step at a time, and if your child is already becoming attached to screens, work on slowly weaning them off of it. “Just scale it back a little, as much as you can at first.”
“You don’t have to sit there for 20 minutes to an hour. A two-year-old doesn’t have much reading stamina, but you can read them something that has maybe five pages, that’s mostly ‘the cow says moo, the pig says oink,’ and you gradually build up from there,” Calzasa recommends.
Duff added that “you shouldn’t feel like you need to read every word on the page, or even any words on the page. We know one of the most helpful ways to read books is by having a conversation with children about what they’re interested in. Follow their lead.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
