I fell into a trap that I’m sure is familiar to many people with regards to my relationship with reading. I used to be a voracious reader, staying up past my bedtime to finish just another chapter and loving the feeling of being immersed in a whole new world that every book brought me. But, for some reason, I stopped.

Upon reflection, it’s become very clear that this sharp decline in reading very closely aligned with when my work started to pile up and, most importantly, when I got an iPhone. For someone who used to win school prizes for the number of books I read, I suddenly and abruptly switched all my attention to that dopamine-bombing device as I was exposed to a wealth of limitless videos and opportunities to chat with friends. Whenever I would feel guilty about not reading, I would always get distracted by another YouTube video and often felt that reading was just extra effort piled on top of my schoolwork. I would sometimes find a one-off book engaging over the summer holidays, but I always got driven back towards my phone.

“This sharp decline in reading very closely aligned with when my work started to pile up and, most importantly, when I got an iPhone”

The thing about social media and streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix, is that they are easy. All you have to do is lay there and let a wave of entertainment catered to your specific interests wash over you, and, before you know it, hours have passed. Reading always required active engagement and concentration, the very things that are weakened by a barrage of pithy tweets and funny videos. It is the sole mission of these social media companies to keep viewers hooked for as long as possible, and I am sorry to say I am not above the addictive algorithms conjured up by the likes of Zuckerberg and Dorsey. This has only become worse as technologies have progressed, with TikTok’s highly curated stream of 15-second videos appealing to our ever-shortening attention spans. If I’m watching hours of YouTube videos at double speed, all hope for mulling over a classic novel is long gone.

On the other hand, I would be remiss to ignore that amongst all the panic over the decrease in reading for leisure, we probably read as much now as our parents did at our age, if not more. It is simply that what we read that has changed: articles online or even the popular infographics on key social issues are not inherently better or worse than a traditional book. Indeed, reading on the internet is likely to expose you to a lot of perspectives traditionally shut out of print media. For example, during the Black Lives Matter protests last year, I found lots of value hearing from organisers and activists first-hand across social media which probably would not have happened if I read it in a book published a year later.

I think it’s also important to note that my decline in reading coincided with the increasing pressure to read ‘classic’ books, which became more demanding. Instead of getting sucked into the action-packed adventures of Percy Jackson, I was being encouraged to ponder the drawn-out dithering of Jane Eyre. When I needed to relax from a busy day of school, I didn’t want a challenge, I wanted an easy solution. Even the fact that I only had to carry around a phone, which I am told is surgically attached to me anyway, instead of a heavy book meant that it was my default whenever I had a quick break from work. The ease and accessibility of my phone meant that I never committed to the effort of picking up a book, creating a vicious cycle in which my lack of practice at reading made my next attempt even more onerous, which discouraged me even more.

However, despite how awful lockdown was for everyone, one positive thing was that I began to read again. After the obligatory initial stint of cake baking and home workouts, followed by the subsequent crash of weeks of glued to TikTok, the overwhelming boredom of isolation prompted me to set myself the goal of reading a book a day for the month of May. Despite not really believing that I would stick to it, I ended up reading 24 books that month, mainly spurred on by my realisation that I was going to do a degree which half involved analysing literature. Alternating between the non-fiction books I always told myself I would get around to and the classic novels I felt I should know, I put my phone on aeroplane mode and did little else but read. Turns out the fear of becoming the only illiterate person to go to Cambridge serves as a good motivation! Even more surprisingly, after my initial frustration at having to wade through pages of seemingly meaningless metaphors, I actually was able to rekindle my enjoyment of reading.

Now I don’t want to come across as just congratulating myself on what basically constituted lying on my bed for four weeks – I only read one book the following month and keeping up with my reading in my first term at university has been hard. However, this challenge showed me that, if I cared, I could actually put my phone to one side and start to read for pleasure again. I believe that making a conscious choice about how you spend your leisure time is the key, as we often absent-mindedly open our phones and then get confused when we’re on hour six of watching Hunger Games conspiracies.

“I realised that intentionally setting aside a little bit of time to read a few pages was useful in helping to slowly rebuild my confidence”

Therefore, if you’re anything like me and lament your decline in reading activity, just start. Whilst it would be very true to say that ‘the powers that be’ have a vested interest in keeping you on your phone and away from your neglected pile of novels, at the end of the day I realised that intentionally setting aside a little bit of time to read a few pages was useful in helping to slowly rebuild my confidence. This realisation came, of course, after going from zero to a hundred with how much I read, so maybe don’t take my advice!