Recently I have been thinking about not just what we read but the way the format of what we read can affect us.

It seems that for adults the predicted death of paperback books and their replacement with e-readers may be premature. For those people who do read, the paperback form persists.

 

However, what do the changes to reading habits mean for our children?

And what does the amazing shift from written to visual media mean for their understanding of the world?

 

A first thought is that it seems that the way children consume and share stories has changed. Even twenty years ago, the common sources for storylines were still films and books – the Harry Potter stories loomed like a giant over the experience of anyone growing up in this period.

This has changed. I frequently speak to children when they are deep into creative play in the classroom and the playground. The main source of their inspiration is now from online gaming. In particular, boys relish being able to physically act out the action that they experience when gaming.

That is fine, and there is some very imaginative play indeed surrounding subjects like Minecraft. The concern is that the stories seem to be action and non-verbal. There are sound effects that they copy from the screen rather than words.

 

Girls seem to fare better, and most play centres on performance, such as copying the new heroes that they see on platforms like TikTok. There is music and dance, and an enthusiasm to learn new moves and a delight in sharing them. Even though there is more language involved in their play, and I suspect that this might always have been the case, there is little that is derived from film or the written word.

 

The question for parents is this: in a world that is increasingly dominated by visual media, does the loss of the written word matter?

I think it does. There is a richness and a magic to language from the page that develops the spoken word in ways that are crucial. Every educational study still indicates that reading develops language in ways that other media cannot.

 

The spoken word makes the brains of young people fizz. The learning curve is steep. I can see this when we share demanding language with the children. Sometimes we accept that they will not follow every word but they can still immerse themselves in the richness. This happened recently when we shared part of ‘To Autumn’ by John Keats. The children did not understand every word but revelled in the language and their language abilities being stretched.

As an adult, I feel the same when I watch a Shakespeare play at The Globe Theatre on Southbank. My Shakespearean is rusty, but I can feel the pleasure in stretching for the meaning. After twenty minutes my head is so into it that all other distractions fall away.

 

We can achieve this with the children by reading with them regularly and allowing them to explore and love books. If we want our children to be ahead of the rest, we need to encourage them to read, read, read. It is through deep immersion in language that we can give them the tools counter to the visual world. We certainly need to make them ready for a strange, screen-heavy existence. We can, however, guarantee them a joy that is being overlooked at the moment.

The loss of the written word does matter, and by encouraging our children to read for pleasure we are continuing to provide them with a valuable tool for life.