Thoughts, Questions, and Epiphanies by Jennifer Bean

Equating Smoking and Social Media

2025-09-18 17:59:32 UTC

The quote, “You could smoke on buses — you could smoke on airplanes. You could smoke anywhere. We look back on that now with horror. And I think the same thing will be true of phones. We’ll go, ‘How did we allow 11-year-olds to go onto social media?’”

It's so true. The saying, when we know better, we do better comes to mind. I think future us will be horrified that we knew the impacts but did nothing at the time.

jennifer_bean2 — 2025-09-18 18:00:41 UTC

But when she visits classrooms, she sees students reading short, disconnected “popcorn passages”

jennifer_bean2 — 2025-09-18 18:01:47 UTC

But state-of-the-art digital entertainment has conditioned them to want more from their media. “Their minds are encoded to get information as fast as possible,” he said. “They have to turn that off when they go to school.”

2025-09-18 18:01:53 UTC

Graphic novels are the best way to get a reader hooked. Yes, the content is short, but the ability to push students through a whole series is exactly the point. Sustained, concentrated reading efforts. A win is a win.

2025-09-18 18:02:12 UTC

I see reading stamina being an issue with kids because, as the article put it, they are reading "popcorn passages" or small snipits all the time. We see this with the popular books like graphic novels too.

jennifer_bean2 — 2025-09-18 18:02:56 UTC

So have we really lost readers or are the conditions not still there?

2025-09-18 18:11:26 UTC

The concept of overscheduling children on a daily basis is a real thing!