When I was a kid, my dad read to my brother and me almost every night before bed. Very early on, it was Dr. Seuss. Dad literally knew Yertle the Turtle by heart. Later, it was The Chronicles of Narnia and the like, and always a lot of Bible stories. When my kids were little, we read many of the same things together as a family, giving me a new perspective on these old stories. Who knew that Yertle was actually a fable against Adolf Hitler?
This tradition of family reading was based on two assumptions: that our kids would grow up to be readers themselves, and that reading would make them happy and smart. The first assumption was and is mostly correct—more on that below. But while the second was true before, today it no longer is, especially for millennial parents. Kids are reading a lot, but it is making their lives worse, not better. This is because of what they are reading: texts, group chats, captions, comments, posts, search results, and websites. Thousands upon thousands of words of information harvested during multiple hours spent online every day.
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