We talk about reading as if it is in a race. As if every time a kid picks up a phone instead of a book, reading has lost a point. And I understand why we frame it that way. The competition feels real. YouTube, social media, every platform built around the endless scroll, they are extraordinary at what they do. The additives of a phone and everything that comes with it, the brain chemistry they tap into, the way they are engineered to keep you coming back, it’s a losing race, we cannot compete with that.
But here is the thing. Reading was never supposed to compete.
It is not a faster, quieter version of TikTok. It is not trying to win your attention the way an algorithm does. Reading is its own thing entirely. And the moment we stop treating it like a competitor and start presenting it to kids as something categorically different, something that exists in a completely separate space from their devices, everything about the conversation changes.
Reading offers quiet. It offers balance in a world that is otherwise relentlessly loud. It offers the health benefits we know are real, focus, empathy, stress reduction, the slow building of an inner life that is completely our own. But more than any of that, it offers something increasingly rare: A place where we do not have to perform.
How often does that happen?
With a book, no one is watching. Well, unless you are reading in public, of course. There are no likes, no comments, no version of yourself being constructed for an audience. You get to just be with a story. Not be judged. Not worry about what anyone thinks. That is a selfish indulgence, and I mean that in the best way. In a world that is constantly asking us to consume, to engage, to spend more time on their platforms, reading quietly says: this is for me. Just me. And the way it restores me is something I can’t let go of.
Giving kids the gift of reading is one of the few things we can offer them that pushes back against all of of the consumption and production. Not by banning phones or lecturing about screen time. But by showing them that reading exists in a different category altogether.
If we want kids to see reading as its own thing and not as a lesser version of entertainment, we have to change how we talk about it.
Stop framing it as the alternative to screens. When we say “put down your phone and read,” we immediately set up a competition reading will lose. Instead, talk about reading as something you do for yourself, not something you do instead of something else.
Talk about the privacy of it. Kids live remarkably public lives, even at young ages. I don’t envy my own children in any way when I think of the type of teen years I had, I am so glad there were no cameras ready to record at any moment. The idea that reading is a space that belongs entirely to them, where no one can see what they are thinking or feeling or imagining, is genuinely powerful. Name that out loud.
Celebrate the selfish part. Reading is one of the few things in a child’s life that is purely for them. Not always to improve their grades, not just to make a teacher happy, not to perform for anyone. Let them hear you say that. Reading is something you do because it feels good and it is yours.
Model the quiet. Let kids see you read. Not as a lesson, but as something you genuinely want to do. When they see an adult choose a book, not to be productive but simply to be still for a while, that lands differently than any message we could ever deliver. This is yet another reason to make your reading life public in some way.
Connect it to who they already are. Reading identity is not built through assignments. It is built through the experience of finding a book that reflects something true about you, or takes you somewhere you wanted to go, or makes you feel something you could not name before. Our job is to help kids find those books and then get out of the way.
The algorithm wants our attention and it is so easy to fall into. Social media wants your engagement. Every platform is designed to want something from you.
Reading wants nothing. It just waits.
That is not a weakness. That is exactly what makes it worth protecting and worth giving to the young people in our lives as the gift it truly is.
Pernille Ripp 