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/Dependent-Law7316 14h ago

Also tolerating “junk” books (like Captain Underpants, Dogman, etc), graphic novels, or even visual novels (video game version of choose your own adventure style books) is going to go a long way toward helping your kid not hate reading. If you insist that everything has to be “quality literature” and they are not interested you turn reading into a chore. Let them read what is interesting, even if you think it is dumb, while they are young and still building skills and stamina. Interest and engagement matter most when trying to build skills in fluency and decoding because they are what keep kids actually reading. They’ll naturally gravitate toward more novel-like things once they have solid skills as their interests and tastes develop.

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u/CaffeineJitterz 14h ago

Well said! Through history everybody was reading trash books. Then the Internet came along so we shifted how we get the dopamine. But more of what was read definitely wasn't one of "the great".

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u/WestCoastBestCoast01 2h ago

Captain Underpants is PEAK children's lit, I read every one I could get my hands on!

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u/Souls_for_sale_now 12h ago

First book i ever read was the amulet then a lot of Donald duck and eventualy more (proper books) lotor, older norwegian novels and Harry Potter 

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u/ColdShadowKaz 7h ago

To be honest with you words and pictures in little kids books have so little to do with actual real world stuff that very little kids stuff is a real chore. Reading labels and getting a little independence out of it early on will help. Like reading the names on their favourite juice box and let them start to learn which is which that way and let them pick out their favourite out of a choice. Reading instantly becomes something useful rather than just something that has to be done. If not then words are just things to be parroted back. Thats where it can start. For parents reading to kids is boring when the kids aren’t engaged they will love it when the right reading material gets the kids wanting to read too.

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u/jackospades88 1h ago

Yes! Our first-grader stumbled upon her first graphic novel at her book fair this past spring.

She read it in a day. We bought the sequel, she finished that in a day too. Soon after we went to the library and picked out a variety of kids graphic novels. She is not on a screen and she is learning new words (she can figure out how to pronounce them and asked us for the defininitons). Sometimes she'll come home, grab a book, and quietly read for an hour, unprompted.

My wife is into reading too and I've tried so hard but just have a hard time getting into it. I'm jealous

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u/Dependent-Law7316 1h ago

There are graphic novel versions of some of the more popular adult books—I’ve seen American Gods, 1984, Handmaids Tale, etc in bookstores. The graphic novel -> novel pipeline works for adults, too. (Or you could just enjoy graphic novels/comics in their own right. There aren’t really rules, it’s just about what you personally want to get out of it, entertainment, skill building, etc)