What If We Stopped Thinking About Reading as the Alternative to Screens?

In many homes, the conversation begins with a familiar scene: a child is watching videos, playing an online game, or scrolling through posts, and a parent asks, "Why don't you read a book instead?" The concern is understandable. The question, however, turns two very different activities into competitors and makes reading sound like the punishment for enjoying everything else.

Children already move between many kinds of media. They might watch a short video about Ancient Egypt, ask AI to summarise a novel, listen to a podcast about space on the way to school, and play a game with its own characters and story. Digital technology is part of everyday life, so the goal cannot simply be to replace it with books.

Books and screens offer different experiences. A video can explain an idea quickly, while a book may ask a reader to follow an argument or story over several days. A game can respond immediately to a player's actions, while a novel asks the reader to stay with a character's decisions without controlling the result. Reading for pleasure is therefore not just another way to consume information; it is a distinct way to use attention.

Reading Gives Children Somewhere Else to Go

One of the most notable things about a book is that it doesn't need to show you everything.

When a story describes a room without showing every object in it, the reader has to furnish the room. A child pictures the window, hears a character's voice, notices what has not been said, and connects one event to the next. None of this is passive. The book supplies words, but the reader supplies the pace, the emphasis, and much of the scene.

More than 150 million books are estimated to exist around the world. That is an extraordinary library of possible lives. Somewhere in those pages is a character a child might recognise themselves in, a person whose life is completely different from their own, a question they have never considered, or an idea that changes the way they see the world.

The Link Between Reading and Empathy

Reading asks people to follow someone else's perspective for longer than a quick post or video usually requires. A child might follow a character who is nervous on the first day at a new school, worried about a family problem, or unsure how to repair a friendship. The child does not have to agree with every decision, but they do have time to understand why the character made it.

That doesn't automatically make every reader more empathetic, of course, but stories can create opportunities to practise seeing beyond our own experiences. They allow children to encounter different lives safely and imaginatively, developing their understanding of people and perspectives they may not otherwise meet.

But What About Children Who Don't Like Reading?

The answer is not to make reading feel like a test. Giving a reluctant reader a 300-page novel and requiring 30 minutes every night may turn an activity they already find difficult into a daily source of conflict. If reading for pleasure is meant to build a lasting habit, the experience needs to include genuine enjoyment and a sense of progress.

One of the simplest ways to encourage reading is also one of the easiest to overlook: let children have a say in what they read. Children are much more likely to become engaged readers when they can follow their own interests.

For example, a child who follows football may stop over breakfast to read a match report, first for the result and then for the description of a decisive goal. That small moment matters because curiosity has arrived before the instruction to read.

It might even begin with something that doesn't traditionally feel like "reading" at all. The goal isn't to create a child who reads the "right" books; the goal is to create a child who wants to find out what happens next.

You Don't Need to Find an Extra Hour

There is another misconception worth challenging: that reading for pleasure requires a large chunk of uninterrupted time.

It doesn't.

Reading does not require an extra hour in an already crowded day. Homework, sport, clubs, friendships, and family life all compete for children's attention, particularly as they get older. A plan that ignores that reality will feel like another demand before it has become a habit.

Ten minutes before bed can be enough to read a few pages. Someone might listen to an audiobook during a car journey, read a magazine while travelling, or share a book at the weekend. These moments are realistic because they fit around existing routines instead of demanding a new schedule.

The point is not to meet a target number of minutes. It is to make reading available often enough for interest to build. If a reader wants to continue after ten minutes, they can keep going. If they spend time choosing between books before reading only two pages, that choice still gives them ownership of the activity.

Sometimes We Need to Put the Phone Down Too

Of course, this isn't only a lesson for children.

Adults also influence how children understand attention. It is difficult to ask a child to stop scrolling while checking our own notifications or to recommend reading while replying to messages. Children do not need adults to give up technology, but they benefit from seeing adults make deliberate choices about when to use it and when to put it aside.

Our Head of English, Susannah Everest, knows this feeling well.

“In the modern world I can sometimes sit down on my phone and before I know it an hour has passed with me mindlessly scrolling, leaving me feeling more exhausted and mentally drained than I was before.”

For Susannah, reading has become a deliberate way of creating space at the end of the day. Rather than reaching for her phone before bed, she chooses a book or her Kindle, giving herself time to step away from the constant stream of notifications. She also reads beyond her usual preferences, often following recommendations from friends and discovering that books she initially would not have chosen can become favourites.

“I take great pleasure in escaping reality, not thinking about my to-do list of work for the 30 minutes I have reading a day.”

Reading for Pleasure Is About More Than Books

That final idea matters because reading does not always need to be useful in an obvious way. It does not have to improve vocabulary, prepare a child for an assessment, or deliver a new fact. A person can read for half an hour and finish with no measurable result beyond feeling less crowded by the day. The aim is not to turn reading into another obligation, but to help children find stories they genuinely want to return to.

Takeaway

The most important thing about reading for pleasure isn't how many books a child finishes or how many minutes they spend reading each day. It is whether they discover that stories and ideas can hold their attention by choice.

Adults can support that process by making books and other formats easy to access, protecting short reading moments, and showing that they too can put the phone down and concentrate. Reading will not replace every digital activity, and it does not need to. Its value is that it develops imagination, empathy, sustained attention, and personal choice in a way that screens cannot fully replicate.