Classrooms once defined by the soft rustle of paper are now witnessing a different reflex. Nearly one-third of children entering preschool in 2025 did not know how to hold or turn the pages of a book. Some attempted to swipe at the paper as though it were glass. The gesture was instinctive, almost elegant. It was also profoundly telling.
The finding, drawn from a school readiness survey of more than 1,000 early elementary educators across England and Wales, signals more than a passing curiosity. The earliest literacy fault line of the digital age may be emerging long before adolescence. It may be forming at the threshold of preschool.
A subtle but structural shift
Public debate has largely fixated on teenagers and smartphones. Lawmakers have convened hearings. Schools have imposed bans. Parents have agonised over social media and sleep cycles. Yet a quieter transformation has been unfolding among toddlers and preschoolers, largely outside the glare of policy scrutiny.
Across the United States, the contours of that shift are stark. According to the 2025 report “
” by Common Sense Media, four in ten children own a tablet by the age of two. Seventy-five percent of parents whose children use screen media report setting no consistent limits. Nearly half of children aged 0 to 8 have consumed short-form videos on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram reels, formats calibrated for rapid stimulation rather than sustained attention.
What is changing is not simply exposure time but cognitive expectation. Books unfold gradually; screens react instantly.
One invites endurance; the other rewards immediacy.
When reading becomes optional
The problem is not with the technology but with displacement. Time spent on screens always comes at the expense of other formative rituals, especially shared reading.
Research carried out by the National Institute for Early Education at Rutgers University from 2020 to 2023 finds that shared reading practices have not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. Before 2020, 85 percent of parents reported reading regularly to their preschool-age children.
This fell to 65 percent during the pandemic and increased to only 73 percent by the end of 2023.
Exhaustion, children’s restlessness, and the increasing preference for screens are cited as the main obstacles by parents. Today, fatigue and convenience matter more than tradition in early literacy practices.
Traditionally, children were introduced to stories by their caregivers through the magic of repetition, vocal expression, and the physical experience of turning pages.
Readiness rewritten
Educators report that some preschoolers struggle to attend to a book for even short intervals. Sustained listening, once assumed, increasingly requires deliberate instruction.
This development coincides with rising academic expectations. Many school systems now expect children to begin decoding text at ever earlier ages. Kindergarten standards resemble those once reserved for first grade. Benchmarks have advanced, even as foundational experiences at home have shifted.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, in its January 2026 policy statement on digital ecosystems and children, refrains from prescribing rigid screen-time limits for those under five. Yet it emphasises that infants under 18 months struggle to transfer knowledge from screen to real-world contexts due to immature cognitive processing. Heavier exposure to noneducational and solitary media use is associated with delays in language and cognitive development.
The concern is developmental rather than ideological. Rapid scene changes, flashing visuals, and algorithm-driven content may capture attention but do not necessarily cultivate it.
Attention economy meets early literacy
Three-year-olds are neurologically oriented toward their immediate surroundings. Digital environments are engineered to dominate that orientation through colour, motion, and sound. Such features can overwhelm rather than enrich emerging cognitive systems.
A picture book demands imagination. It asks a child to animate still images, infer emotion, and anticipate what comes next. It requires patience and rewards reflection. These are early rehearsals for executive function—capacities that underpin reading fluency, self-regulation, and academic resilience.
When children approach print expecting the responsiveness of a touchscreen, frustration can follow. Paper does not glow.
It does not respond to touch. It waits.
The issue, therefore, is not technological hostility but developmental sequencing. When screens precede sustained storytelling, they may recalibrate how children approach text itself.
A generational crossroads
Alarmism serves little purpose. Technology is woven into contemporary childhood and will remain so. Tablets can deliver high-quality educational content. Video platforms can connect dispersed families.
Digital ecosystems are not inherently corrosive.
Yet literacy has always begun as a shared act. It is cultivated in laps and living rooms long before it is measured in classrooms. If shared reading continues to erode, schools will increasingly function as compensatory spaces for experiences once considered ordinary.
A child swiping at a book page is more than an anecdote. It is a symbol of a generational pivot in how language is first encountered.
Whether that pivot deepens inequality or prompts recalibration depends on collective choices made by families, educators, and policymakers.
Teachers are already adapting. They demonstrate how to hold a book. They model page-turning alongside phonemic awareness. They rebuild, deliberately and patiently, the choreography of reading as a physical and relational act.
Screens will not disappear from childhood. Nor should they. The enduring question is whether, before mastering the swipe, children will also master the turn of a page—and the quiet discipline that comes with it.
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