There's a sentence adults say about teenagers so often it has stopped sounding like an opinion: they don't read anymore. Attention spans, dopamine, phones. You hear it everywhere, and I understand why people say it.
I don't think it's true. A lot of teenagers are awake at two in the morning reading. Fan fiction, web novels, long threads about a book they finished hours ago, the last chapters of something they couldn't put down. The reading didn't stop. It moved.
The room changed
For a lot of us, reading at night meant a torch under the covers and a door that closed. The world stayed outside it. For a teenager now, the book and the world arrive on the same screen. The story sits one swipe away from the group chat, the news, the message nobody has answered yet.
That changes what the reading is for. Sometimes it's escape. Often it's the opposite: a way of getting closer to something they can't say straight. A character who lies to protect someone can be about a sister. A twist about a friendship can be about the friend who stopped replying. The book is the door. It's rarely the room.
A story written by a stranger can be the only place a teenager finds the words for what they're carrying.
Who I picture when I write
When I write for young adults, that's the reader I think of. Not the one reading for a test, but the one awake too late, reading because there's nowhere else at that hour to put down what they're feeling. I want the book to be good company for them. I want it to take them seriously.
What to ask instead
Parents often ask how to get a teenager to put the phone down and pick up a book. Sometimes the better question is a different one: does your teenager have somewhere to put the thing they can't say out loud? If the answer is no, the book was never competing with the phone. It was competing with silence.
Tomorrow, at a normal hour, ask your teenager what they were reading the last time they couldn't sleep. Not why they were awake. What they were reading. The second question often answers the first.
Somewhere tonight, a teenager is going to open a book, or a screen with a story on it, because there's nowhere else to put down what they're carrying. I'd rather we were curious about what they're reading than sure that they aren't.
I read, I choose, and I write about the books that stay with me. I also write The Keeper Chronicles.
Raising readers, one week at a time.
Once a week: a short personal note, one article about reading or family life, one practical idea to try, and a question you can answer just by replying. One email a week, never a sales pitch.
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