R(eading) I(s) F(undamental)

I have three children. 

Child number one just graduated from college with an English/philosophy BA.  Always a reader – always a thinker.

Child number two is extremely smart, but the only thing he reads for fun is twitter.  He will, however, read books assigned at school.

Child number three might be the smartest one, but I’ll never know, because I have to bribe her to read anything that isn’t on Instagram.  I finally got her to “read” yesterday, then I realized she had a Wreck This Journal book, which TOTALLY doesn’t count as “reading”.   She read only one book in all of seventh grade, and she only read it because she didn’t need to read the books to do any of the assigned work.  So I literally forced her to read one (I read it in one day and then asked ridiculously specific questions about the plot so I would know if she was lying – which she totally would do to get out of reading).

So, let’s put this in perspective:  I’m a teacher of English who inspired exactly one-third of my children to read books. 

What I’m about to say makes me sound like a fossil and a technophobe, but technology is seriously destroying people’s minds.  I’m not about to be a hypocrite and say that I don’t play games on my phone, but this 30-second-attention-span society that’s blossoming all around us is not PROGRESS.  We might have more information and accessibility at our fingertips, but we are losing true communication.  My youngest will have friends over, and when I come in the room, they’re all staring at their phones.  It’s pretty bleak.

I have no solution to this problem, I might add.  I get it.  Technology is cool.  But we went from a youtube trend to a vine trend, and I seriously think it’s just because vine is shorter.  Less time spent trying to sort something out.   THINKING is out of the question.  We’re becoming a bunch of fucking drooling idiots who would rather be distracted for a minute than actually do something productive – something which is fine SOMETIMES, but not ALL THE TIME. 

It’s a mystery.   I’ll keep digging, and perhaps we will all come out on the other side of this distraction.