Katie Coen

Growing up, my sister and I would sit in the playroom of my childhood home and browse through our bookshelves, deciding what we wanted to read that day. I found reading fun and fulfilling, time consuming — yet interesting. We would sit on our chairs labeled with our names for hours, just enjoying each other’s company with a good book.

That love of books dramatically changed around when I started middle school. My teachers would push various books in our faces, forcing us to read and write every night. The fact that I had to read made me not want to open a book at all. I never thought about it too deeply until now. I finally have come to the realization that my love of reading utterly stopped when social media came into my life.

I was too busy scrolling through the old Instagram, the way it used to be. My alone time suddenly got eaten up by technology. It was addicting. When I moved out of my childhood home, I told my mom I didn’t need any of those books on the shelf in my playroom. I had social media instead.

Hari explains how being on social media creates a different relationship with reading. “It stops being a form of pleasurable immersion in another world,” Hari says (page 81). I saw this in my own life when the way I read and what I read changed so much in so little time. I see now how social media really does impair our brains and how they work. When I was so focused on the latest trend, I could’ve been engulfed in the fantasy of a good story.

Now I’m inspired to bring back my love of reading. I want to try to put my phone down and find a book that engages me enough to forget about the lies of social media. I want to be that girl in the playroom again, reading for fun and letting the words heal me.

Source

Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again. Crown, 2022.