The Prophetic Warning of “Goodnight iPad”
It caught my eye immediately as it slipped into the classroom library basket. “What is THAT?
My fifth grade student brought it over to me. She was a voracious reader, and picture books were not her usual fare.
But, like me, she must have recognized its connection to everyone’s favorite bedtime classic. I’d read Goodnight Moon so many times to my son that I’d memorized it.
It was 2011. Just one year after the iPad’s launch. A few fifth graders had them at home.
The impact of the digital world on my students was already evident
A few more had their own iPhones. One fifth grader, as I recall, already had hundreds of followers on Instagram. Once, she showed me a picture of a bug she’d posted. A bug. It had hundreds of likes.
The impact of the digital world on my students was already evident. Except for their technology class, their access was entirely outside of school at this time.
But it showed up in their conversations, in their interest in books and their homework, and at dismissal to carpool at the end of the day. The first thing the kids who had phones did when they left class was pull them out and scroll or text.
The big question often discussed among parents and teachers back then was Do children really need their own phones? As we would learn, the collective answer was going to be ‘yes.’
Goodnight iPad! I couldn’t wait for my next planning period when I could sit down and read it.
That reading was a pivotal moment for me. Looking back, I think it’s the moment when I knew I would eventually write The Invisible Toolbox.
I’d long been interested in how the simple practice of parents reading to their children regularly in the early years impacted their child’s future learning. Through my many years in the classroom and as a parent, I could see that it mattered a lot.
Goodnight iPad portended a future in which this was much less likely to happen.
Much in this charming story, penned cleverly by author Ann Droyd, is dated. It’s been 15 years after all. Remember Angry Birds? A 2009-launched massively popular video game. Blackberries? Originally a hand-held pager, it evolved into a smartphone.
Regardless, there were harbingers of truth that predicted exactly where we are now. They’re so obvious that it may be unnecessary to point them out. But I will anyway, because they’ve had a profound effect on children’s brain development and ability to learn.
Isolation and Fragmented Attention
Instead of one little bunny and the old lady whispering, “hush,” we have three generations of bunnies. Quite a few bunny children, a set of parents, and a grandmother—all absorbed in their own devices. Except for Granny.
Video games, movies on the big screen, iPhones, Facebook, YouTube videos. Dad appears to be reading a digital book on a Nook, Barnes and Noble’s now discontinued e-reader. Granny, trying to catch a few winks, grows frustrated watching all this from her rocker, unable to sleep because of the noise of the ‘bings, bongs, and beeps’ all around her.
For those of us of a certain age who can remember growing up with limited TV channels and no personal devices, the loss of family-oriented leisure time is obvious. No one is sharing anything. Each family member is absorbed in the world of their own device.
No one is sharing anything. Each family member is absorbed in the world of their own device
The one exception is the group gathered around the enormous TV watching a scene from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick sci-fi film classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. A group of monkeys are gathered around a black monolith which, in the movie, represents a “religious or mystical object of transcendence that triggers the final step in human evolution.”
The final step in human evolution.
Looks like the author was trying to tell us something.
The symbolism is apt. Like the monkeys, our attention has been fully captured by an inanimate, yet transcendent, object. We now have a window with a view into, arguably, everything in the world.
Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation (2024), might agree. He’s revised his former belief that anxiety is the most concerning fallout of the digital age. Haidt now believes that loss of attention is even more consequential. Our ability to think deeply and persevere is eroding.
But maybe even more damaging is that in taking us out of our lived world virtually, our ability to connect in the present is diminished.
Distracted Parents
In our story scenario Mom and Dad are every bit as absorbed in in their own devices as the kids are.
When sleepless Granny finally has had enough of the digital cacophony, she puts her foot down and yells, “Okay, that’s it!”
No gentle hushing here. She’s on her feet now, gathering up everyone’s devices.
Oh, the begging, the tears, and tugs of war. Mom, still dressed in her corporate suit—it was 2011 after all—is just as distressed as the kids are at having her Blackberry taken away.
Out it all goes—right out the window!
It’s a very funny scene, but sadly true at the same time. Parents are now just as addicted to their screens as their kids are.
We’ve all seen the family out for a meal together at a restaurant with everyone on their phones instead of engaging with one another. Or the toddler in the grocery store cart, Mom’s phone in hand, making it easier for her to get the errand over with.
Parents are now just as addicted to their screens as their kids are
Screens have become so vital to our everyday experience and so tempting for use as a babysitter that many parents haven’t paused to consider the effects on their children.
Common Sense Media recently reported that 40% of toddlers now have their own tablets by the time they’re two. More than 50% have their own device by age 4.
That statistic makes me shudder.
Studies of children’s brain scans show that children who have significant screen time have less white matter than those who not only don’t, but have also been read to. This means fewer neural connections are made, the very infrastructure necessary for language and literacy.
Even scans of children with less than two hours of daily screen time show reduced white matter.
The distraction of parents that includes lack of awareness about screen damage means that children may not be getting the attention they need from their parents—or the shared activity that would be the greatest gift they could receive from them.
Decline in Reading for Pleasure
This picture is the saddest and most telling one of all.
Gen X Bunny Dad may still read a novel, but he’s on his e-book, so the children don’t see actual book reading modeled by an adult.
The cobwebbed bookshelves are bare. Whatever books that remained are trashed along with the newspaper and the gooseneck reading lamp.
This doesn’t bode well for the bunny kids’ futures, and it’s unfortunately what many households look like today.
Children with no books in the home will be behind when they start kindergarten. When children struggle to learn to read, they’re much less likely to pick up a habit of reading for pleasure.
Children with no books in the home will be behind when they start kindergarten
The Children’s Reading Foundation reports that 4 out of 10 children entering kindergarten in the U.S. are three years behind their peers, and 75% of them will never catch up.
Jim Trelease, author of The Read Aloud Handbook, explained that vocabulary is the #1 predictor of school success. Numerous studies show that reading aloud to children even once daily in the earliest years exposes them to 296,660 more words than their peers who were never read to. Reading five books a day will result in a 1.4 million word advantage.
Children who are read to in the early years arrive at kindergarten with a lunchbox in one hand and an invisible toolbox in the other that holds the pre-literacy tools they need to learn to read. They’re also more likely to develop a reading for pleasure habit.
For a growing number of parents, however, the practice of daily shared reading is waning. A Harper Collins UK survey last year reported that more than half of the Gen Z parents asked did not “enjoy” reading to their children.
The decline in reading for pleasure means less cognitive development and lower test scores across all subjects.
In school age students, our nation’s report card the NAEP, indicates that reading scores continue to fall. In 2024, 69% of our 4th graders did not test as proficient readers. 70% of 8th graders were not proficient.
The ACT scores of college-bound high school seniors have dropped in all subjects. Children who don’t read well will struggle to learn in all areas.
College professors complain they’ve had to reduce the amount of expected reading for their classes drastically.
The loss of the habit of reading for pleasure has far-reaching results that profoundly affects learning potential.
Are we doomed to a future loss of attention and decline?
Is there a way back from our technological capture that, post-pandemic, means more time on devices even during the school day? Are we doomed to a future loss of attention and decline?
The author hints at the antidote in the final page.
In my next post I’ll address what parents can do to help insulate their child from the spell of these “mystical objects of transcendence.” Stay tuned.
