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There's a look children have when they're lost in a book. Eyes wide, completely somewhere else. I don't see that look much anymore.
If you’re reading this, chances are you already know. You’ve seen it, worried about it, maybe even changed something in your own home because of it. So in a way, this article isn’t really for you.
But you might know someone it is for. A distant relative, a grandchild, the parents of one. Someone who hasn’t quite joined the dots yet, or who has but doesn’t know where to start. If that’s the case, consider sending this their way. Coming from someone who is both a doctor and a father, I can tell you this isn’t scaremongering. It’s what I see, and what I live.
I love reading. We couldn’t afford books when I was a kid, so my parents took us to Ibrox library every week. We spent hours there, my dad reading the papers while we feasted on every kind of book going. From Asterix to books on whales, I devoured it all.
Reading fiction builds empathy in children. It expands their vocabulary and fires up their imagination. It is one of the most powerful tools we have for emotional and mental growth.
And it is dying. Look around you, from restaurants to airport lounges, and you’ll see it: kids glued to screens, heads down, thumbs moving. Vacant eyes, where once there was a sparkle.
I’ve encouraged my kids to read from an early age. My girls were never a problem. After some initial resistance, they now devour books. My son always preferred running and doing to sitting and reading. But over the last six months, he’s caught the bug too.
What changed? I did. I started reading more myself, not just nonfiction but fiction, and I found books that pulled him in. Setting the example as a parent matters more than any rule you can lay down.
The other day, out for lunch, a woman at the next table leaned over and said, “It’s so nice to see children like yours, well behaved and talking.” We hear this constantly.
Our kids aren’t extraordinary. They are simply how children are meant to be, when there isn’t a screen shoved in their face every waking hour.
Screens, smartphones, and social media are doing real damage to the developing child’s brain. If books build empathy, screens strip it away. If books spark imagination, screens flatten it. If books bring joy, screens breed boredom. If books give you inner peace, screens leave you hollow. If books calm you, screens wire you for anxiety.
A former colleague told me he gave his 10 year old daughter a smartphone and now regrets it. “She has changed,” he said. I asked why not switch her to a dumb phone. “Too late,” he replied. Then he told me that three other surgeons he knows in London have had to get their teenagers psychiatric help, all because of phones and social media.
As a family, we’ve decided none of our kids will get a smartphone before they turn 16. Are they on board? Yes. Why? Because we’ve explained everything to them, and they can see it happening to the children around them with their own eyes.
Screens are not a substitute for parenting. Children mirror what they see. So if you don’t want them glued to phones, put yours down first. If you want them reading, read to them. If you want them talking and laughing, talk and laugh with them.
I worry about the generation coming up behind us. Their very humanity hangs in the balance.
I can't help but wonder who benefits from a generation that struggles to concentrate, to think critically, to sit with a hard idea long enough to understand it. A population that's distracted, anxious, and endlessly scrolling is not a population that questions, organises, or pushes back. If you care about freedom, about a future where people can think for themselves and stand up to power when it needs standing up to, then protecting our children's attention and their minds isn't a side issue. It's central to it. Their welfare today decides what kind of adults, and what kind of human, they become tomorrow.
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Doc
Hutton et al. (2020), JAMA Pediatrics “Associations Between Screen-Based Media Use and Brain White Matter Integrity in Preschool-Aged Children.” DTI study of 47 kids aged 3 to 5 finding screen time was linked to lower structural integrity in white matter tracts supporting language and literacy skills.https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2754101
NIH-funded ABCD Study cortical thinning findings, summarised in Psychology Today Children with more than seven hours a day of screen time showed thinning of the brain’s cortex, the area related to critical thinking and reasoning.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-age-of-overindulgence/202509/screen-times-dangers-from-brain-development-to-heart-health
PMC (2024/2025), Shanghai cohort “Multidimensional screen exposure and its impact on psychological well-being in toddlers.” Found mobile phone, VR, and computer use over 30 minutes a day were linked to higher difficulty scores on a standard parent-report measure. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11669193/
American College of Pediatricians position paper Summarises a national sample of 40,337 children finding those with over an hour a day of screen time had lower psychological well-being (less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility), and teens with 7+ hours a day were over twice as likely to have a depression diagnosis.https://acpeds.org/media-use-and-screen-time-its-impact-on-children-adolescents-and-families/
U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory (2023) Comprehensive policy document; cites a longitudinal cohort of 6,595 adolescents where those spending more than 3 hours a day on social media had double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf
Haidt & Twenge (2023) “Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review.” An ongoing, frequently updated NYU working paper/document collection. Jean Twenge’s research page lists her full body of work including newer 2025-2026 papers on smartphones, academic decline, and loneliness. https://www.jeantwenge.com/research/
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