Why it matters that teens are reading less & focusing more on social media

Of course, teens are still reading. But they're reading short texts and Instagram captions, not long-form articles that explore deep themes and require critical thinking and reflection

Most of us spend much more time with digital media than we did a decade ago. But today’s teens have come of age with smartphones in their pockets. Compared to teens a couple of decades ago, the way they interact with traditional media like books and movies is fundamentally different.

My co-authors and I analyzed nationally representative surveys of over one million U.S. teens collected since 1976 and discovered an almost seismic shift in how teens are spending their free time.

Increasingly, books seem to be gathering dust.

It’s all about the screens

By 2016, the