When did it become easier to scroll for an hour than to read one more chapter?

These days, I sometimes reach for my phone before I’ve given a book a chance to pull me in. I used to read for entire afternoons! And even keep going well into the night. Why did I lose my powers? I used to be very good at ignoring the real world and diving into the fictional one. The problem is that there’s always something else to look at, and giving our full attention is getting harder and harder as the stories we consume every day on our phones get shorter. We want the introduction, middle, and end all right now, and books take their time to build the characters and the story. So, of course, we have no patience. TikTok and Instagram Reels offer much more instant fun, so we fall into their traps. But books have another charm. I miss being able to give a story my full attention. 

My mom made me fall in love with reading. When I was little, we would read together in bed. She read to me aloud, and I looked at the illustrations on the pages. Eventually, I began reading on my own. It was so easy to get invested in a story. Books became something I wanted around all the time.

If we went to the mall, I always wanted to go into a bookstore. I’d always find something I wanted and ask my mom to buy it for me. Getting into a saga made this a recurring situation. I had finished one book, which meant I now had a very reasonable explanation for needing another. I couldn’t leave the characters halfway through their problems.