Do You Feel The Need To Read? If Not, Here’s A Book For You
Originally published at RealClearEducation.com
As U.S. reading scores drop to the lowest level in decades, one thing is clear: America has a reading crisis on its hands.
More than 40 percent of Americans with a high school education or less have not read a single book in the last 12 months. Less than 20 percent of U.S. teenagers claim to read a book, magazine, or newspaper daily for pleasure, despite over 80 percent reporting to use social media every day. Then there are college graduates, who have experienced the sharpest reading decline among all Americans in recent years.
Ask yourself: Do you struggle to get past five or 10 pages? Are you spending more time on screens than before? Over the last decade, I have certainly found it more difficult to concentrate on reading. It is increasingly tempting to simply “jump ahead” or “get the gist.”
In the original Top Gun (from 1986), Tom Cruise’s signature line is now iconic: “I feel the need for speed.” But how many of us, if we’re being honest with ourselves, truly feel the need to read?
The reason for our diminishing attention spans is something called “neuroplasticity”—the ability of the nervous system to change, based on internal or external stimuli. Human beings consider the physical evolution of our species as a fact of life that happens over eons, and that is mostly true.
But our brains are slightly different: They evolve rapidly to ingest and process information in different ways. Given the technological revolution of today, our brains are adapting rapidly to consume content in ways that seemed impossible just decades ago.
For those who struggle to finish that darn book, there are three factors at play:
Social media platforms, news feeds, search engines, and now artificial intelligence services like ChatGPT are feeding the growth of the part of your brain that responds to immediate rewards. This isn’t a coincidence: That part of the brain is where addiction lodges and grows—where instant gratification trumps delayed gratification.
A separate part of the brain is where book-reading activates neuroplasticity to develop major critical skills. This includes the ability to imagine or invent—envisioning worlds that don’t yet exist. Those skills, in turn, allow us to predict, strategize, and defer gratification in pursuit of longer-term goals.
Decades of video games and other tempting “screen” offerings have starved our brains of the alternate formats necessary to develop critical skills. AI now brings the potential to overwhelm the “need to read” well beyond what we experience today. We are in uncharted territory, with ChatGPT making instant gratification exponentially more alluring.
As a former CEO and a longtime parent, here’s a solution to today’s gratification problem: I want you to read an actual book—yes, the whole book—that will help you understand why this is a problem in the first place. The book is called “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” Published in 2010 by Nicholas Carr, the author expands on a 2008 article in The Atlantic, which asked: “Is Google making us stupid?” And, in many ways, the likes of Google or ChatGPT are indeed making us dumber collectively.
According to Carr, the Internet is a medium based on interruption, with which people have come to associate the acquisition of wisdom as some deeper form of reading or solitary concentration, even though it isn’t at all. Carr claims that using the Internet is like trying to read a book and finish a crossword puzzle at the same time. And he is right: Online tools, while useful, are often undermining the skills we need as citizens, parents, and productive members of society in an ever-more competitive world.
Now, despite my recommendation, I understand that many people won’t even consider following through. Many people will still just seek out a quick summary.
But Carr is onto something important. Consider Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote: “The medium is the message.” The medium of the Internet is slowly altering our patterns of perception, without much resistance.
With that in mind, the benefits of reading cannot be overstated. James Olds, University Professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University, claims the brain is extremely plastic, allowing itself to reprogram quickly and alter its functioning on the fly. More and more U.S. schools are now embracing the “science of reading,” recognizing the inner workings of the brain and how scientific phenomena like phonemic awareness—understanding the building blocks of words—help students learn to read at a young age.
We need to give the brain enough oxygen to reprogram by getting through those five to 10 pages. Imagine how reading changes the mind, making us deeper, more strategic thinkers. We become thinkers with more patience and a heightened awareness of “the long game.” We think beyond the short term.
As a final encouragement to read Carr’s book, allow me to present another statement, courtesy of researcher Maryanne Wolf (from the book’s dust-jacket comments section): “Ultimately, ‘The Shallows’ is a book about the preservation of the human capacity for contemplation and wisdom, in an epoch where both appear increasingly threatened.”
Distractions exist, but we must do our very best to ignore them and get through the whole book. That means doing our best Tom Cruise impressions and feeling the need to read.