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About 80% of children and young people consume content on social networks in the US, reports the American Psychological Association.
Children are not reading. That is one of the biggest concerns parents and teachers have expressed lately. How accurate is this assertion? What cracks can we find in this argument that, at this point, sounds more like a mantra? In the United States, only 20% of teens report reading books, magazines, or newspapers daily for entertainment, but the other 80% consume social media content, so sustains The American Psychological Association.
In England, 65% of children aged 5 to 15 use social networking sites or apps. According to a survey in Colombia published by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE in Spanish), 70.4% of the population over the age of five read on digital platforms in the past year, and 64% did so through social networks or messaging services.
It’s not whether they read or not. It’s about the content
We could argue that children and young people are reading, but what is the quality of their reading materials? Are they developing the cognitive skills and tools that reading should provide? Vocabulary, sentence construction, coherence, critical thinking, comprehension, memory, imagination, openness, and tolerance of different points of view and ideas. We would need another article to address them all. How many of these abilities are honed by reading Facebook and Twitter posts or blogs and stories on Reddit?
This topic is highly understudied, but it is worth opening the conversation about the value of this type of reading and how the Internet and digital content change the ways children and young people learn and read. The stream of easily accessible information circulating continuously supports content democratization and overexposure. This last one hinders the profound reading necessary to develop the skills mentioned above. Previous articles have discussed social network information management, echo chambers, and communication practices that hurt reading quality and significantly diminish reading’s function as a didactic resource.
A question of formats
Social networks are a very diverse space. One can find valuable content in Reddit subforums or Twitter threads or completely useless and polarizing material on the same forums. Such a varied flow of information must be considered on a case-by-case basis. It would not be possible to review them all, but it would be plausible to conduct curatorial work. For example, take a small sample of net content and use it as study material, asking questions relevant to the topic you want to discuss in class: Is this publication well written? What spelling mistakes can be detected? How does the selection compare to a book passage about the same subject? Is the information false, true, biased, or incomplete? What thoughts and emotions does it evoke?
In literature, “valuable” and “useful” are not equivalent descriptions. Without a doubt, Don Quixote is one of the definitive literary works of the Spanish language and Ulysses in English. We would fail as teachers if we did not understand that their value is more appreciative than functional. It is necessary to have a conversation about the difference between books that show us the best of Spanish or English culture and those that teach us to think and communicate effectively in everyday language. Just the latter belong in the elementary, middle school, and high school programs.
In Spain, 88 students were surveyed about their conformity to the reading material chosen by their schools and its usefulness to instill reading habits. Young people between 15 and 18 manifested a significant disconnect between the selected works by their institutes (most written in medieval times) and their ability to relate to these contents to learn from them. “[…] the selection of texts intended to teach reading literature, those prescribed in the curricula, are not usually appropriate to adolescents’ lives, reading, and cultural experiences. We remain hostage to the index of national literary history instead of opening ourselves to today’s universal classics and quality youth literature,” commented Guadalupe Jover and Rosa Linares, language teachers and co-authors of the new Spanish Language and Literature curriculum regulating how the subject is learned and assessed.
To instill in children and young people the habit of reading, we must choose books with content rich in linguistic structure, vocabulary, ideas, postures, and all the elements that make them appropriate to the didactic material. These books must connect with the students. Their communication cannot be very alien to how they understand and express themselves, and the experiences and topics they narrate or describe should be relatable. If reading is ultimately a tool to better understand, communicate, and navigate the world, it makes sense that the curriculum should comprise works that reflect the students’ world.
What do you think of children’s and young people’s reading habits? Do you think their reading is declining? What strategies have you used to encourage reading in students? What books would you prefer to read in class if you are a student? Would you like digital media to be included? How would you prefer the subject be approached in the classroom to motivate reading? Let us know in the comments.
Translation by Daniel Wetta
Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of Tecnológico de Monterrey.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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