The End of the Page?

Student Guest Opinion

By Lainie Rintala | March 15, 2025

According to a survey by Common Sense Media, only one in five teens spend time reading for pleasure each day. However, teens spend an average of seven to 10 hours a day on social media. As a teen who indulges in both of those activities, I find these statistics troubling but not surprising.

Phone addiction is a real pandemic, especially in young generations, and I believe that one of the best ways to counteract this is by reading.

As a teenager who has grown up as social media has skyrocketed, I often find myself in cycles of endless scrolling. I know it’s not good for my mental health whenever I scroll for hours, but sometimes I can’t help it. The ways that it stimulates my brain just feels so addicting.

My mom is an English teacher, so naturally, when she sees me in these slumps, her first response is that I should pick up a book.

Many kids find that their parents tend to use phones as an excuse for all kinds of problems, even when it seems irrelevant. If you get a bad grade on a test, it’s because you’re on your phone too much. If you feel sad or mad, it’s because you’re on your phone too much. Although I also find this ideology frustrating, I admit that it does hold truth as well.

I know from personal experience how social media depreciates mental health. I notice how much my anxiety increases and how little motivation I feel to do anything else. If teens picked up a book instead of their phone every time they wanted to scroll, I believe that not only would their mental health improve, but their happiness would, too.

However, even from a psychological standpoint, this is much easier said than done. Social media apps have trained our brains to expect that we should receive dopamine hits in a few seconds. Reading cannot provide that same instant gratification, even though it makes your mind and body feel much better in the long run. Scrolling on apps like TikTok every day lessens attention spans, making it harder to focus on a book and easier to get distracted. That is why these habits must be broken.

However, it is not entirely the kids’ fault. Parents are arguably the most influential people in their kids’ lives and serve as constant role models. If parents don’t set good examples of reading habits, their kids are much less likely to pick up a book.

As I mentioned, my mom is an English teacher and is always reading at any chance she gets. I am grateful that she has shown me how exhilarating reading can be and how important it is to find genres and books you like, because then you are unstoppable. Although I got my constant worry and anxiety about things I can’t control from her, I also learned the best way to cope and escape those thoughts from her example.

There are seemingly endless different genres of books available to read, and when one finds the kind of books they enjoy reading, they are much more inclined to read in their free time.

One of my favorite genres to read is romance because the slow burn of the characters’ relationship development always keeps me wanting more to see where their story ends up. Reading historical fiction allows me to immerse myself in a different time period and challenge my mind to put myself in their shoes and imagine what life might have been like if I lived then, too. Another genre I enjoy reading is realistic fiction because it includes situations that feel like they could happen to me, and allows me to apply the lessons learned in the book to my life.

I am not the only one who has noticed the positive benefits of indulging in a good book. It is scientifically proven that the ways reading stimulates the brain can be beneficial in many ways.

Bibliotherapy refers to the use of reading material to help alleviate mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and grief. Bibliotherapy is used by many health practitioners and has been found to be sometimes more effective than more traditional forms of therapy. The simple act of reading can even be used to heal or treat patients suffering from dementia and psychosis.

There are many ways that society can attempt to get teens to read more. An article by Psychology Today highlighted an initiative in place in Baltimore to take these steps. Local organizations in Baltimore organized One Book Baltimore, which allows for 7th and 8th graders to all read the same book, producing conversations around important topics and connecting the community’s youth through reading. Programs like this also help to solve the issue of isolation that can often be a result of social media use.

Although all teens are in different circumstances, I am confident that if everyone made an effort to read for 15 minutes every day, they would notice so many differences in how they feel both mentally and physically. Maybe then we would start to crave reading more than scrolling on social media.

Lainie Rintala is a sophomore at TC West and enjoys playing tennis, golf, reading, and writing in her free time.