Reading belongs to every child — not as a skill to master, not as competition for their phone, but as one of the last truly private spaces they have. Here is why we need to stop framing it as if it is in competition with devices.
We talk about reading as if it is in a race. As if every time a kid picks up a phone instead of a book, reading has lost a point. And I understand why we frame it that way. The competition feels real. YouTube, social media, every platform built around the endless scroll, they are extraordinary at what they do. The additives of a phone and everything that comes with it, the brain chemistry they tap into, the way they are engineered to keep you coming back, it's a losing race, we cannot compete with that.
