How Do We Fix the Kids?

Note: there is not a list of citations at the end of this article as many of the citations are webpages. They have therefore been linked throughout wherever you see a link.

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How Do We Fix the Kids?

I think we all know that generations Z and Alpha are not really getting into reading as much as they probably should with many of them and their teachers/lecturers noting how difficult it is to get a Gen-Z to read a book. (If you've read my article entitled 'UniversityGPT' this shouldn't actually surprise you if you've paid attention to their lives). So we've indentified the problems. The next step is: how do we fix these problems?

Part 1: Problem Recap

A quick recap of the problems that these two generations face include:

• Social media and smartphones with aggressive marketing since they were born
• Social media becomes real life instead of being a supplement for real life
• Addictive gambling methods used to keep them on social media for many hours of the day, leaving no room to do anything else
• Millions of dollars spend on top-level psychologists to hack into their minds, leaving them little autonomy
• COVID giving them no growing room at a crucial time in their lives
• Being ill-prepared for critical thinking and responsibility for their learning thanks to the poor quality of the state education system and thus moving to use ChatGPT on all of their essays, perpetuating the cycle whilst being anxious about getting the thing they desperately need to move on in life

Okay, now we've done that - let's have a look at some solutions that we could advise to these young people. Note: these ideas are not going to be quick fixes, instead they are small implementations that, in time, could begin to undo some of the terrors that have come about in their lives.

Part 2: Steps Towards a Better Reading Future

0-3 Years' Old

Let's begin with the smallest of all people: babies and children aged 0-3 years' old. It is well documented that reading to a child of this age at least three or four times a week for fifteen minutes to half an hour can make a huge difference on how they understand language and how they read later on in their lives. This will help the child also choose their favourite book for you to read to them (I would like to thank my mother and my often choice of Each Peach Pear Plum; she never gave up on it no matter how many times I wanted it read to me).

In some research, it even suggests it can make them 'school ready' much quicker and much more confidently than children of the same age who were not read to. I understand that this is possibly difficult to achieve seeing as both parents work, both parents share in the household expenses (meaning that the rising cost of books is not on your side). But I also understand that most of all the other stuff happens to be given to women. Here is where the solution lies: men and women have to share in the unpaid labour equally before this is ever going to happen.

3-16 Years' Old

Next is the children who can usually read any length of book by themselves. Children aged anywhere from 3 years' old to 16 years' old should be encouraged to read at least one book a month designed for their age group. This may seem like a really low amount if you're reading this on my account (let me remind you, I am not only a millennial, but I am a bloody abnormal one at that) but it is better than nothing. Also doing something once a month means that the amount of pages a day/week can slowly be increased over the course of their childhood/adolescence.

An alternative method for children of reading age is to make reading a social activity between a couple of friends. From what I have seen, book clubs seem to be no longer on the radar at school and thus, some children have difficulty doing something by themselves out of loneliness (hence social media filling the void, however badly). But apart from this, children tend to imitate what adults do - they like feeling like they are adults and so, if they are around adults who read, they too will read. Back in 2023, even Penguin acknowledged that this was probably the number one priority for getting children into reading.

16+ Years' Old

Now this is a difficult one because technically, adults have autonomy of choice but we also have to admit that Gen-Z probably has the worst mental health out of any generation of people. This is another thing I discuss in the aforementioned article "UniversityGPT". So, to actually pick up reading that late into your life is more of a struggle than if someone conditioned you into it throughout your life. There's a lot of problems you can identify there but there are solutions derived from the way in which Gen-Z think (and this is where I apologise because not all of it shows Gen-Z in a kind light, though I still have empathy for that group of young people).

Generation Z is more likely to have a cultish mindset than any generation since the teens of the 1960s. Cults of consumerism and wellness tend to be at the top of the chart with many reporting on a possible apocalyptic cult-like mindset as well. (See: doom-spending). But this also means that reading can become a group hobby if taken up correctly. There are plenty of novels which have social commentaries on the Gen-Z way of life including but not limited to Ling Ling Huang's Natural Beauty and Baek Sehee's I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Fostering the possible social gains of this before introducing classic literature could be a way in. But, more than often we see older generations (such as mine) berating Gen-Z for not being able to read difficult literature. Honestly, this is not the way to go about things if you want someone to do something.

I mean, imagine if you were constantly being berated for not being able to do mathematics. It wouldn't make you want to even try by the end of it. And because Gen-Z live most of their life online, this is all they see people older than themselves talking about. It's because social media is designed to make you upset and angry - it shows you things that you will engage with because you are depressed. We knew this before COVID and chose not to do anything about it.

These people are now in university have skirted through the state school system where expectations of them were lowered by horrifying degrees. Unfortunately, university doesn't tend to lower expectations, they have their own to set. This differentiation shocks their system and they find their only outlet to be ChatGPT because of their lack of proficiency for reading and writing. Having been through COVID, where all the adults collectively admitted it really did hurt these guys - it is surprising why we still place the blame on them.

Sitting on the virtual lives on the internet, Gen-Z can only see a hatred for their generation from the older people and this, because of social media, can be seen more than any other generation saw it before them. Every generation hates the new kids, but Gen-Z see so many more people complaining at them and not just the biology teacher because some dreamy millennial in 2010 was trying to write a villanelle during their class on photosynthesis. I'm not projecting, I'm just saying.

Nobody in history has had eyes on them like Gen-Z and they can't do anything with that. Pushing them out of reading circles because they're reading Colleen Hoover novels isn't a good idea. What we should be doing is taking these books to introduce them to other writers. Do you have any idea how many millennial girls discovered Jane Austen from reading girl boss YA novels? Exactly. Oh you like novels about abusive relationships and horrifying break-ups? Here's an Emile Zola novel.

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article, and I hope we have some takeaway points here as well. Mainly the takeaway point is that pushing people away from something by berating them ad nauseam on the internet, reposting articles about how some professor is getting whiny that he actually has to do some work with Gen-Z as opposed to skirting by every day and making this generation who have had it horrid enough feel even more like shit will get us nowhere. I know that social media makes beasts of us all, but how about showing a bit of empathy? It can't hurt.