Time up on your child’s iPad? Now put a book in their hands

Amid strict screen-time rules, old-fashioned print reading holds many benefits. The community needs to make books more accessible for children.

Loh Chin Ee

If there are interesting books that children want to read in the home, reading becomes a viable entertainment option.ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG

With recent screen guidelines for children updated as part of the newly launched national health strategy, parents might be wondering what to do to keep their children occupied at home.

The guidelines include not giving children screen time during meals or one hour before bedtime. They also include limiting screen use outside of school to less than one hour a day for children between the ages of three and six, and double that for those aged seven to 12.

While parents agree with the measures, some say they need more support to help put them into practice. Working parents juggling work, family and other responsibilities face challenges in this regard, particularly those with no domestic helper. Allowing children to entertain themselves on their iPad helps the parents multitask.

Here’s a suggestion: The evidence tells us one way to entertain children is to put a print book in their hands. Yes, good, old-fashioned print.

If there are interesting books that children want to read in the home, reading becomes a viable entertainment option.

Books, like mobile games and watching videos online, are a form of entertainment. In an attention economy where a wealth of content competes for our time, children and teenagers are often led down the rabbit hole of endless clicks and links in the digital environment.

Unlike the smartphone or tablet, the physical book is limited in its capacity to hold content. However, it does offer a chance to relax, get away from the glare of screens and to immerse oneself in the words and stories on a page. This is especially relevant considering that the national health strategy aims to encourage children and adolescents to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Indeed, a study of international students in Amsterdam reported that print reading made them “feel calm and relaxed” and was an “escape from a digital world”. Another comment was: “I find my imagination is far better when I read print instead of screen.”

Reading the hardcopy of a book compared with on-screen holds value for young people. Schools and the community play a crucial role in nudging young readers in that direction, especially with more time opening up away from screens.

How the evidence stacks up

Students who reported reading books “more often in paper format” or read books in both paper and digital format enjoyed reading more and scored higher in one of the reading tests administered by the well-known Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy paper reported. Socio-economically advantaged students tended to have more books than disadvantaged students.

In a study of adolescent reading in Singapore co-authored by myself and Dr Sun Baoqi, we found that when it comes to self-reported reading enjoyment, print came out on top over digital. The study involved Singapore adolescent boys and girls aged 13 to 16 years old.

Despite minimal digital divide in terms of device ownership between students from differently advantaged homes, students from socio-economically advantaged homes – defined as having at least one university-educated parent and not being on financial assistance – were more likely to read more in print. Moreover, rather than just using their devices for gaming or social media, they were also more likely to use them for e-reading.

Importantly, these students possessed more books at home and were more likely to source reading materials from bookstores and public libraries.

Narrowing the print divide

When it comes to digital access, Singapore has a near perfect scorecard, with most households having internet access and smartphone ownership. Low-income families and seniors receive subsidies for digital access. The Personal Learning Device initiative by the Ministry of Education (MOE) means that every secondary school student has access to their own tablet or laptop for learning.

While we seem to have put in place strategies to deal with digital access and competencies, we may have neglected a more fundamental and widening divide – the print divide.

The availability of print books is crucial to developing a familiarity with books that leads to a reading habit. During the Covid-19 lockdowns between 2020 and 2021, some young children reported that they enjoyed reading more than before.

In studies in the United Kingdom and in Singapore, it was found that while socio-economically advantaged students enjoyed reading more during the lockdowns, socio-economically disadvantaged students’ reading enjoyment declined.

One reason for that has to do with the number of books at home.

New books are expensive for low-income families who have to manage their budget for essential items. A picture book or paperback young adult novel could cost between $15 and $30. Between buying a bag of rice and a book, the choice is obvious. Libraries, then, become the sensible choice.

So, community support is vital for closing the print gap.

In an intervention study supported by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Social Mobility Foundation and in partnership with the National Library Board, we encouraged low-income families living in rental flats to commit to visit MOLLY, NLB’s mobile library, on a twice-monthly basis for six months.

Parents reported that afterwards, their children enjoyed reading more, and are more confident in handling books and reading.

One parent told us that her nine-year-old daughter now reads before bedtime because she has more books at her disposal. Her daughter shared: “Before I discovered MOLLY bus, I didn’t read much before bed… And now I read before bed all the time.”

More significantly, this same parent limited screen time for her child, demonstrating that parental knowledge worked together with library resources to nurture a reading child.

After the study, the parent decided to take her child to the nearby Punggol library as she found there was a larger collection and play facilities for her younger child.

Educating parents by organising regular learning journeys to orientate families to the public library may be one way to expose them to the library’s resources and programmes.

The role of schools

Since children spend a third of their weekday in school, the time allocated for reading is vital. In a year-long study US eighth-grade students (Secondary 2 students in the Singapore context) were allowed to choose what they wanted to read in classrooms filled with hundreds of contemporary titles and talk daily about these books.

The study found that students improved in their reading comprehension. They also became more empathetic, and reported the books supported their well-being and helped them to understand each other and their world better.

On the aspect of comprehension, although young people can also read digitally, they often engage with shorter texts online, using skimming and scanning. They can view as many words online when doomscrolling as when reading a short story, but what differs is the amount of attention paid to the reading.

Studies show that such kinds of digital reading do not improve reading comprehension, unlike slower, more sustained engagement with lengthier texts. The capacity to engage meaningfully with multiple complex texts is necessary for continued literacy growth in adulthood.

But to do this, we need to make sure that students have time to read. And we need to fill our schools with motivating reading materials.

Secondary 1 and 2 students get to read literary texts in their literature classrooms, but students across all primary to secondary levels should have time to read good books and talk about them.

Stocking our school libraries with books that appeal to young people also encourages reading. Contemporary young adult literature, crime fiction, series books, manga and comics, biographies, non-fiction and Singapore literature are some examples of books that young people like.

Together, as a community, parents, schools and libraries can work together to help our young people find books and time to read.