Nows and Forevers

Saw a study a few weeks ago that gave me pause, given that my job is all about the written word: Fewer people are reading for pleasure: Only 16 percent of all adults, according to the American Time Use study, have either read a book, a magazine, a newspaper; listened to an audiobook; borrowed a library book; or read on a Kindle or e-reader in a 24-hour period.

Only 16 percent!

That’s the lowest in the history of the survey, with 2004 having the highest percentage of adults who read for pleasure (28 percent).

Used to be, television was the major reason why reading wasn’t so popular. But now reading and television are being laid waste before the explosion of social media. It’s not just scrolling, which was bad enough for a time suck. Now the short-form videos have led to a culture that is no longer interested in anything that doesn’t give instant gratification and mollifies our ever-shorter attention spans.

That’s bad for writers. That’s bad for readers. That’s bad for people in general. It’s bad for society.

I get it, it’s a distracted world out there. I don’t read as much as I want to. If I get an hour of reading in a day, then I’m lucky. But with social media and artificial intelligence and a culture that is trying to get us to read less and less, I’m trying to do it more and more. Someone described it as a super-power, reading, and it is. And it’s even more so as fewer people do it.

I believe that completely.

I’ve been able to find the time thanks to doing what I can to limit the amount of time I spend on my phone. I removed social media. I took off whatever apps I had. (It helped that I have never been a gamer and I could care less about games for the most part.) And while I need the phone to talk and to text for work and my personal life, I’m using it less and less for anything else.

It’s scary how much I was depending on it.

So if anyone asks me how they can find time to read, here’s a simple answer: Make the phone a lot smaller part of your life.