Although I'm a member of Gen Z, I was fortunate to attend a phone-free school that championed reading.
Immersion in a fictional world is among life's most precious joys, and studies have shown that reading for pleasure reduces stress, calms the nervous system, and builds the reader's ability to sit still and focus for longer periods of time.
The antidote to our society's anxiety crisis is gathering dust on our library shelves! Data also indicates that reading for pleasure gives children better cognitive performance and is correlated with less screen time and deeper, longer sleep patterns.
How much more difficult will it be for a child today who is given a smartphone at age nine and isn't given a good book to read? At this rate, kids' attention spans will be so short that they won't even be able to enjoy watching a full-length movie, let alone read the Hardy Boys or Old Yeller.
Teachers can do this by implementing entire class periods to silent reading, reserving a few minutes a day to read from a book out loud, and working with school libraries to host book fairs, author readings, and literature-themed parties.
Ideally, more individual schools would take the initiative, avoiding any need for government intervention, but these blanket bans create an opportunity for educators to instill in students a true love of life through reading great literature.
If teachers in these phone-free schools can reintroduce the pleasures of reading for its own sake, kids will be more readily open to loving truth, goodness, and beauty wherever they encounter it.
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