Gen Z Can’t Read A Full Book

College professors, even those at highly selective schools, have been seeing a worrisome trend. Students aren't able to read books cover to cover.

This month's Atlantic article, "The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books," by Rose Horowitch points to two issues:

1. High schools aren't assigning whole books

2. SMARTPHONES

If a whole generation doesn't have the attention span to read a book cover to cover, we may start to see other problems beyond the youth mental health crisis we are already experiencing. If you don't have the attention span to read a book, you probably will also experience the following:

1. The inability to sit with uncomfortable emotions and instead turn to distractions and escape.

2. The inability to face a challenge and work through it.

3. The inability to summon perseverance.

4. The inability to follow and retain details of a situation while understanding the overall goal.

5. The inability to understand complexity and nuance.

6. The inability to comprehend language due to an underdeveloped vocabulary.

A society that is unable to do the above is a vulnerable one.

At LOOK, we are building a sophisticated, multi-tool solution to address the harms of smartphone overuse. We will help everyone regain their focus so that in the near future, teens will be able to — and choose to — read full books again.