Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time • Hacker News Board

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#81

Post by zug_zug » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

fnordsensei wrote: post #15

zug_zug wrote: post #10

For what it's worth, there seems to be no evidence that reading increases IQ. And it's kinda always struck me as slightly weird how proponents don't feel the need to gather evidence on the matter before making bold prescriptions for everybody else. 1. https://chatgpt.com/share/6aa158f6-b980-83e9-997e-e65be209f9...

I’m guessing that passing the tokens through the visual cortex doesn’t matter as much as how you engage with the content.

What matters is if you find research on what's true about this world like a responsible adult, or just try to come up with a zinger because you're not

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#82

Post by zug_zug » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:06 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #28

gjvc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno why this is being downvoted. Animal Farm is a commentary / allegory on communism. Teaching it to young minds who have not experienced the difference between the realities of communism and the rest is a vanity at best.

It's also a story, and quite an enjoyable and well written one at that. My 8 year old son enjoyed being read it.

You know that's not the chief goal -- if that's the chief goal, we'd all be assigned to watch Babe rather than read animal farm.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#83

Post by zug_zug » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

jwrallie wrote: post #31

zug_zug wrote: post #5

Well for whatever it's worth, I feel like I understand why. At least when I was in school, nobody really made a very persuasive case for why reading was important (which I think it is) and I'd routinely get assigned books like Animal Farm or whatever and be told like "Spend X hours reading this thing and learn some profound lesson about life." And I'd just be like, "What? This book cannot prove anything, other than o…

It’s just the context. I grew up in a different culture and we all hated being forced to read at school, just different books. I enjoyed reading Animal Farm but it was something I picked up by myself, and read on my own terms.

I agree that a lot of what I didn't like about Animal Farm could have been fixed in a different context (deep dive into the theory of socialism as a classless society, overloading of the word communism, actual history of Russia and how it didn't achieve a classless society, history of Orwell as a person and his own political beliefs, exploration of Animal Farm as polemic tool and analysis of its effectiveness as a tool, analysis of how it's misunderstood today as a criticism of the idea of communism, McCarthyism and how Animal Farm was introduced to classroom during the coldwar)

But here's my main thesis -- we have a situation where not-reading books is incentivized:

In an information-rich environment, I just learned more about animal farm in 10 minutes by asking AI all of the above questions than I did in 10 hours of reading without proper context back in highschool.

If reading itself (and not shaping the values of youth) is really just the goal, then we could solve this by assigning materials to kids that are likely to match their interests (I don't know slenderman, twilight, harry potter, ender's game, whatever).

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#84

Post by zug_zug » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

hackyhacky wrote: post #17

zug_zug wrote: post #5

Well for whatever it's worth, I feel like I understand why. At least when I was in school, nobody really made a very persuasive case for why reading was important (which I think it is) and I'd routinely get assigned books like Animal Farm or whatever and be told like "Spend X hours reading this thing and learn some profound lesson about life." And I'd just be like, "What? This book cannot prove anything, other than o…

>This book cannot prove anything, other than one person's opinion on history You've misunderstood the purpose. Fiction was not ever intended to achieve scientific goals, i.e. to discover the truth about our universe. It's intended to be thought-provoking, i.e. to inspire questions about our universe. You need the question before you can find the answer.

I've looked up animal farm in more detail, and it seems like you're fundamentally undereducated on the topic.

Animal Farm entered Anglo-American classrooms in the late 1950s, and its adoption was heavily influenced by the Cold War political climate . The book was seen as "useful" for teaching, but its political utility was part of the appeal—it provided "an easy use... as an anti-Communist and anti-revolutionary lesson" . This wasn't just a grassroots phenomenon; it was actively encouraged by intelligence agencies.

Both British and American intelligence services promoted the book as an anti-socialist message and supported its distribution . The CIA even arranged for a 1954 animated film adaptation that altered Orwell's story—emphasizing that animals on neighboring farms were content and changing the ending to have the animals overthrow the pigs . This film was widely shown in US and UK classrooms, embedding a distorted version of the story in the educational system for years