Are We Contradicting Ourselves? Encouraging Children to Read While Asking Them to Spend Less Time on Screens!

There’s something rather curious about what we’re doing at Rob’s Books.

On the one hand, we’re encouraging children to spend less time endlessly scrolling through social media, watching online videos and becoming absorbed in computer games.

On the other hand, we’re developing a new digital reading membership that encourages children to use screens to enjoy books.

Surely that’s a contradiction?

Well, not quite.

We don’t believe the problem is necessarily the screen itself. What matters is how that screen is being used.

There’s an enormous difference between endlessly swiping through short videos and settling down to enjoy an imaginative story on a tablet or e-reader.

One activity encourages us to move rapidly from one piece of entertainment to another. The other invites us to concentrate, follow a story, discover new words, imagine characters and think about what we’re reading.

Of course, computer games and digital entertainment can also encourage creativity, learning and problem-solving. We’re certainly not suggesting that children should abandon them altogether.

We’re advocating balance, not banning technology.

That’s precisely why we’re developing our new free, advertising-free family reading membership at Rob’s Books.

We want to help parents, grandparents and carers introduce children to the pleasure of reading from birth onwards.

Our plans include digital picture books, bedtime stories, imaginative adventures, vocabulary activities, puzzles and creative resources, organised around different stages of childhood.

For babies and toddlers, reading will naturally involve adults sharing stories, pictures and conversations. For older children, the emphasis will increasingly move towards independent reading, curiosity and imagination.

And importantly, the stories don’t have to end when the screen is switched off.

Children can draw their favourite characters, invent alternative endings, act out adventures or simply talk about what they’ve discovered.

The screen is merely the delivery method. The story is what matters.

We’re not trying to raise a generation that never uses technology.

We’re hoping to encourage a generation that knows how to use it for something worthwhile.

A generation that reads for pleasure, thinks independently, asks questions and discovers that the world contains considerably more than the next notification.

After all, the same tablet that plays a computer game can also introduce a child to a thousand wonderful stories.

Perhaps the real question isn’t how much children use screens, but what they’re doing with them.

What do you think? Can digital books help children develop a lifelong love of reading?

We’d genuinely welcome your thoughts.

Discover what we’re building at Rob’s Books:
https://robs-books.uk

Rob’s Books – From First Words to Lifelong Adventures.

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