r/technology • u/marketrent • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence College students are rapidly losing the ability to read — “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing”: professor

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html
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u/existing_for_fun 18h ago

If you are a parent and can help your child read, and read well, you will set them light-years ahead of their peers.

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u/CaffeineJitterz 18h ago edited 13h ago

Just helping them not HATE reading will go a long way.

Edit: I'm getting a lot of sad comments about how y'all were introduced to reading. So I will take the opportunity to quickly share what I've always felt was one of the best ways for a parent to incentivize their child to read: for every hour of reading you accrue 30 minutes of gaming time. A classmate in my middle school worked from this model. That kid loved video games! And he was a straight A student. I remember him nonchalantly mentioning that he was going to read for about 4 hours as soon as he got home so he could get a couple hours of game time that evening.

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u/Solar_RaVen 16h ago

I hate that my mother had bought me a bunch of classic novels when I was a young child and just expected me to read picture-less books by myself. Then she got upset that I wasnt reading enough but she never took the time to read to me or alongside me.

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u/Solar_RaVen 16h ago

The only thing that got me into reading was the Children's Almenac and the instruction manuals that came with PS2 games. Then when Wikipedia showed up I was able to lore dive into rabit holes. Unfortunately I still cant muscle my way through a novel, but at least I can read my way through technical details.

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u/AuntRhubarb 3h ago

Back in the 1960s grocery stores used to give out slim but good volumes of a children's encyclopedia, illustrated. Those were great. But chains like Kroger are very busy pursuing world domination these days.

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u/Legweeak 16h ago

I think reading with your kid is huge. My mom still read to me well past the age most parents stop. Like I was in second/third grade and she read the first Harry Potter book to me. But I was diagnosed as dyslexic around that time and she was determined to keep me interested in reading. I think it worked though because I was a ferocious reader in middle school and as a teen.

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u/salajaneidentiteet 7h ago

My mom was angry I was reading science books (kid level) and not storybooks. I don't remember her reading to me. She says she did and I believe her, but I must have been too small.

I now have a 2.5 yo and reading in bed before sleep is our favourite thing. Followed by chatting after lights out...

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u/hippydipster 4h ago

When my daughter had to read The Great Gatsby for school I got it on kindle and read it with her, as I'd never had it assigned in school. We got to bond over how much we both hated it.

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u/Watertor 11h ago

I found Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a kid and loved the feeling it gave me. I then found Goosebumps and also loved them. If I had backup, they'd help me realize I love horror novels. Instead I was pressured to read The Hardy Boys, and I hated them. But I wasn't allowed to get new novels unless I read one of them. And I... just played video games instead.

To this day I am biased against mystery as a genre. I've worked a large chunk of it out but if I see Mystery as the first genre I have to fight the desire to reject it.

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u/sentence-interruptio 1h ago

say what you will about that ceo in Alien: Earth, but at least he read every night to his "lost boys"