Page Turners to Screen Addicts: What Next?

First in a 4-Part Series on Reading

Remember the joy of getting lost in a good book?  The rustle of pages, the scent of paper, the thrill of escape, the feeling of adventure and discovery?  For many of us, those days are fading memories.  Our bookshelves are gathering dust.  It’s time to ask: why did we stop reading? 

The truth stings.  Screens have hacked our brains.  A 2015 Microsoft study says our attention span has dropped to just 8 seconds.  That's shorter than a goldfish’s!  We've traded quiet reading nights for mindless scrolling, swapping deep thought for likes, retweets, and clickbait traps.

The cost?  We’re losing our edge.  Addicted to constant excitement, our focus is fading, and critical thinking is weakening.  We’ve surrendered to a culture of instant gratification and fragmented attention, losing the joy of imagining and reflecting in passive consumption.

But there’s hope.  The reader in us isn’t dead.  It’s just dozing under digital rubble, waiting to be dug out.  The question is: how do we do it?  The answer comes in Part 2.   For now, let us take the first step:

• Read just 5 pages a day; be under no pressure to finish fast.
• Remove distractions; keep your phone silent while reading.
• Re-read a book you once loved; nostalgia can reignite the spark.

Start today.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."- George Martin

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