I have been spending a lot of the time with my extended family due to the current festive season, and one thing I have noticed among my younger cousins – Gen Z (aged 12-27) and younger – is how much they struggle to read. As a Millennial (aged 28-43), who grew up escaping into the fictional worlds of novels, it is rather concerning that the younger generation has so much trouble comprehending the written words.
I am a mother with two young girls, who would like her children to grow up enjoying books the same way she does. But it feels like I’m fighting a losing battle, constantly trying to draw their attention away from all the shiny, colourful games and videos on the smartphone and tablet. When I am with them, I make sure that their focus is strictly on the real world. Sadly, having a full-time job means I cannot control what others would do when I am not around.
People tend to joke that the younger generation has a very short attention span. It is not funny when you consider the responses they leave on social media. There is a severe lack of critical thinking in a lot of them, often turning what should be a constructive discussion into an echo chamber. It doesn’t help that they have poor reading comprehension and even worse spelling skills.
If social media were solely to blame for the declining reading and spelling skills, then we would be way past the stage where we could still do something about it. Digital transformation is the name of the current game, with artificial intelligence (AI) being the head honcho of the new era. If AI could do the bulk of the work for us, including painting and writing songs, what would be left of the human mind? In a decade or two, would we still be able to think at all?
I may come across as a digital hater but I really am not. I love my smartphone as much as the next person. However, unlike the younger generation, I did not grow up with auto-correct and Chat GPT; I had to learn to spell, read and write the ‘hard’ way. One may argue that these shortcuts are timely because there are more important things to learn, to prepare our younglings for the Fifth Industrial Revolution, where critical thinking and analytical skills are the currency. But how will we get there if our children struggle to even stay focused for more than a few minutes?
Millennial Mum
