I saw a TikTok from a kindergarten teacher saying that children in her class were swiping on books as if they were tablets. It didn’t take long before the comments flooded with other teachers sharing similar experiences. Other comments were criticizing parents and society for pushing technology on kids at such a young age and robbing them of an unplugged childhood. When I heard this, I was honestly astonished and it made me wonder how kids lack the experience of being read to or trying to read their cartoons and picture books.

Growing up in my house, games and toys were abundant, as were a multitude of books. Along with the many visits to the library, my parents read to me every night before bed, which made me eagerly want to learn how to read myself. Even now, at the ripe age of 18, I still have a Kindle, but I genuinely prefer paper books. There is something about physically holding a book and reading without constant distractions that makes the experience feel more meaningful and more personal. Reading to me is a way to disconnect and enter a different sphere of emotion and experience. Any genre, any world and any possibility is in a book, which is what I love so much about reading. That is why seeing this TikTok was shocking to me.

What bothered me most about that video was not just how unusual it sounded but the deeper meaning of what it represents. I thought to myself about the implications of kids treating books like screens and how that will change reading for their generation as a whole. The consequences are showing up clearly, because reading levels among children have been declining and the numbers are hard to ignore. Recent national data shows that only about 30 to 32 percent of U.S. fourth graders are proficient in reading, while around 40 percent are reading below the basic level. At the same time, daily reading among children and teens has dropped sharply, with just 20.5 percent reading every day in 2024. Even though the pandemic made the problem worse, this decline was already happening before 2020.

To me, this is not just a school issue, but a cultural issue. Kids are growing up in a world where screens are everywhere. That constant exposure seems to be affecting attention spans, vocabulary and the ability to sit with a book for more than a few minutes. The more time reading gets replaced by scrolling, swiping and quick bursts of content, the harder it becomes for children to focus or build valuable comprehension skills. Reading for pleasure is already dropping as children get older, which only deepens the problem. What worries me most is that reading should not feel outdated or rare. This will result in how young people are learning, paying attention and experiencing the world around them.