I want my son to love books, but how can reading compete with screens?

I grew up believing a library was one of the most exciting places you could visit. This wasn’t because anything dramatic happened there, but because you could walk through the doors, choose a book and disappear into somebody else’s world without spending a fortune.

I remember the shelves, the slightly musty smell of paperbacks and the satisfaction of carrying home a pile of books I had absolutely no chance of finishing before they were due back. Nobody was counting my screen time because there wasn’t a screen competing for my attention. If I wanted entertainment, I had to find it, invent it or read about somebody else having it.

Fast-forward several decades, and I’m a mum who had her son at 40, trying to encourage that same enthusiasm in a child growing up with technology I could barely have imagined at his age. Books now compete with gaming, YouTube and the attraction of watching somebody else play a game instead of playing it yourself.

I’m not entirely innocent. When Cyrus was a baby, Google became my unofficial parenting manual. I searched for everything from feeding advice to sleep routines, usually at an hour when sensible people were tucked up in bed. The internet was convenient, available and never once suggested I should get some sleep.

But convenience isn’t quite the same as connection. And while technology has made stories more accessible than ever, I sometimes wonder whether we’re losing sitting down with a book and allowing ourselves to become absorbed in it.

I don’t want Cyrus to reject technology. I want him to know there are other worlds worth discovering.

It turns out I’m not the only parent wondering whether books are losing their appeal.

According to the National Literacy Trust’s 2026 research, just 36.1% of children and young people aged eight to 18 said they enjoyed reading in their free time. Only 20.3% reported reading something daily.

Those figures represent a modest improvement on 2025, when reading enjoyment reached its lowest recorded level in 20 years. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that encouraging children to read for pleasure remains a challenge.

I find that rather sad and that’s not because I expect every child to become a bookworm, but because reading offers something that can be difficult to find in an increasingly busy world: the chance to become completely absorbed in something without constant interruption.

The figures also need perspective. They tell us how children feel about reading, not why those attitudes have changed. It would be too easy to blame everything on smartphones and gaming when access to books, family circumstances and children’s interests all play a part.

And that’s where parents like me need to change our approach. Rather than insisting children read what we think they should enjoy, we might have more success helping them discover something they genuinely want to read.

Every year, World Book Day arrives with its excitement and parental panic. Children want to dress as their favourite characters, schools organise activities and parents discover that the costume their child absolutely must have is either sold out or requires sewing skills they haven’t possessed since Year 8 textiles.

I enjoy the enthusiasm, although I do think we’ve occasionally lost sight of what the day is supposed to celebrate. Reading isn’t about arriving at school dressed as Harry Potter or the Gruffalo. It’s about discovering that a story can make you laugh, frighten you, comfort you or introduce you to somebody whose life looks nothing like your own.

World Book Day took place on 5 March in 2026, but this year has another reason to celebrate books. The government and National Literacy Trust have launched the National Year of Reading 2026, encouraging people of all ages to reconnect with reading through their existing interests.

Its Go All In campaign takes a refreshingly sensible approach. Rather than presenting reading as something children ought to do, it encourages them to explore books and other reading material connected to the things they already love, from football and music to gaming and films.

That makes far more sense to me than expecting every child to develop an immediate enthusiasm for the classics. For me, success isn’t getting Cyrus into a costume. It’s seeing him become interested enough in a story to ask what happens next. And that doesn’t always happen when I want it to.

I don’t believe screens are inherently bad for children. That would be a difficult argument to make while writing a blog on a laptop and checking my phone.

Technology can be brilliant. Children can explore museums virtually, listen to stories, learn languages and discover subjects that might never appear on their school timetable. For families raising bilingual children, digital resources can also help introduce different languages and cultures.

The difficulty comes when everything competes for attention. Videos move quickly, and another piece of entertainment is always waiting. A book asks something different of us. It expects us to sit still, concentrate and allow the story to unfold at its own pace.

There is research worth considering here, although it doesn’t support the idea that every minute spent online is damaging.

A University College London study published in 2018 examined social media use among 10,904 teenagers aged 14. Researchers found associations between heavier social media use and higher depressive symptom scores. They also explored how online harassment, poor sleep, low self-esteem and body image concerns might help explain those relationships.

The findings are concerning, but they don’t prove that social media causes depression, nor do they establish that screen use damages children’s literacy. The study focused on teenagers, so it shouldn’t be treated as evidence about younger children either.

I think the more useful question for parents is what screen use might be replacing. Is there still time for reading, playing outside, sleeping properly and having conversations around the dinner table?

I don’t want Cyrus growing up believing that every quiet moment needs filling with something flashing, moving or making a noise.

Maybe we should spend less time counting the minutes and more time thinking about what our children are actually doing with them.

When Cyrus was little, one of my favourite parts of the day was our Bath, Book, Bed routine. After the usual negotiations over getting out of the bath, putting on pyjamas and locating whichever toy had mysteriously disappeared, we’d settle down with a story.

There was something comforting about the familiarity of it. The same books appeared night after night, sometimes to the point where I could recite entire passages without looking at the page. I occasionally wondered whether we owned any other books, but Cyrus had his favourites, and favourites were not open to negotiation.

I soon discovered that reading aloud wasn’t simply about teaching him words. It was about spending time together without the usual distractions. We could talk about the characters, laugh at the illustrations and occasionally abandon the story altogether because he’d spotted something interesting on the page.

Those moments mattered to me, particularly as a working mother. There were days when I felt I’d spent more time organising family life than actually enjoying it. Sitting together with a book gave us a chance to reconnect.

The government has encouraged families to read together for just ten minutes a day as part of the National Year of Reading. It’s a manageable starting point, rather than another ambitious parenting target destined to collapse by Wednesday.

Of course, routines change as children grow older. At ten, Cyrus isn’t necessarily going to be impressed by the same bedtime stories he adored as a toddler. But I still believe there’s room for shared reading, whether that means choosing a chapter book, discussing something he’s reading at school or simply making time for our own books in the same room.

One of the more useful developments in children’s publishing is the growth of digital libraries. Rather than treating every screen as something to avoid, some platforms use technology to introduce children to storytelling.

Sooper Books is one example. Its free online library offers hundreds of original children’s stories to read or listen to, including bedtime stories designed to take around five to ten minutes.

I like the principle behind it. If a child is already comfortable using a tablet, why not introduce stories alongside the games and videos? Digital reading doesn’t have to replace traditional books. It can provide another route into them.

Audiobooks have their place, too. They’re particularly useful on long car journeys, when the alternative entertainment involves repeated questions about how much longer the journey will take.

I would still encourage children to handle physical books, turn pages and explore illustrations without a screen. But I’m not convinced we need to make this an either-or argument.

The story matters more than the format, although I confess there’s something about a proper paperback that an illuminated screen will never quite reproduce.

I’ve seen photographs of children’s reading corners that look as though they belong in an expensive interiors magazine. Beautiful shelving, coordinated cushions, carefully arranged books and not a stray Lego brick in sight.

Lovely, I’m sure. But I live in an actual house, where cushions migrate between rooms and somebody is usually looking for a missing sock.

Creating a space for reading doesn’t require a dedicated room or an extravagant shopping list. A comfortable chair, a few cushions and a small selection of books can be enough. The important thing is making reading feel inviting rather than compulsory.

I’d start by letting children choose where they want to read. Some prefer sitting on the floor, others like curling up in bed, and some are perfectly happy sprawled across the sofa with their feet in the air. As long as they’re comfortable and can see the pages, I wouldn’t worry too much about the furniture.

Keeping books within reach helps, particularly for younger children who enjoy choosing their own stories. A small basket can be more useful than an immaculate bookshelf they can’t access without adult assistance.

Good lighting matters, too. A warm reading lamp can make a corner feel cosy, although decorative lights should be used safely and kept away from anything that could overheat.

And if your child wants to decorate their reading space with dinosaurs, superheroes or an alarming number of stuffed animals, let them. It’s their little corner of the world.

I’ve never considered myself a particularly accomplished actress, but give me a children’s book and I’m suddenly auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea is an excellent example. The tiger requires a suitably deep voice, Sophie needs something rather more delicate, and Mummy must sound remarkably calm about an enormous animal arriving uninvited and consuming everything in the kitchen.

Judith Kerr’s story is still one of my favourites because it’s wonderfully absurd. Nobody seems especially concerned about the practicalities of entertaining a tiger, which is probably why children love it.

Then there’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which practically demands audience participation. You can’t simply read the words in a sensible voice. You have to swish through the grass, splash through the river and build up the suspense as the family approaches the cave.

When Cyrus was younger, I’d stop occasionally and ask what he thought might happen next. Sometimes he had a sensible answer. Other times he invented an entirely different ending, usually involving an animal behaving in a way that would concern a qualified wildlife expert.

But that was part of the fun. Reading became a conversation rather than something I delivered while he listened.

And if your child wants you to read the same book for the seventeenth consecutive evening, take heart. Repetition gives young children opportunities to become familiar with language, patterns and stories, even if the adult reading it is quietly losing the will to live.

One of the loveliest ways to encourage storytelling doesn’t involve buying anything. It involves making something up together.

Children have wonderful imaginations, particularly when they’re given permission to be ridiculous. A trip to the supermarket can become an adventure, the family cat can develop a secret identity and a missing Lego figure can embark on a dangerous expedition beneath the sofa.

You can turn family experiences into stories, too. Holidays, birthdays, visits to grandparents or even an ordinary afternoon in the garden can provide the starting point for something imaginative.

For our family, there’s another dimension I particularly value. Cyrus is growing up with British and Persian influences, and storytelling offers a way to connect those different parts of his identity.

Persian culture has a rich tradition of poetry, folklore and storytelling. I love the idea that children can grow up knowing stories from different places, hearing unfamiliar names and discovering that imagination doesn’t belong to one language or culture.

You don’t need to produce a beautifully illustrated book. Write a few sentences together, draw pictures or simply tell the story aloud. Children can invent characters, choose what happens next and decide whether the ending should be happy, frightening or completely absurd.

Years later, you might find those homemade stories mean more than anything you could have bought.

One finding from the National Literacy Trust’s research particularly caught my attention.

In its 2025 survey, 38.1% of children and young people aged eight to 18 said they would be motivated to read something connected to a favourite film or television series, while 37.1% were interested in material linked to their hobbies. Around a quarter valued being able to choose what they read.

That rather challenges the idea that parents should always decide what’s worth reading.

If Cyrus wants to read about gaming, football or something I know absolutely nothing about, that’s fine by me. I’d rather see him interested in a book of his choosing than struggling through something I’ve selected because I think it’s more educational.

The National Year of Reading campaign takes a similar approach, encouraging people to connect reading with the subjects they already enjoy. And that seems far more realistic than expecting children to abandon their interests simply because we’d prefer them to read a novel.

Comics, graphic novels, magazines and books about favourite games all involve reading. They might not resemble the books I borrowed from the library as a child, but that doesn’t make them less worthy of attention.

The pleasure needs to come first. Otherwise, reading risks becoming another chore on an already crowded childhood timetable.

I sometimes wonder whether we’re asking children to do something we’re not good at ourselves. We tell them to put down their tablets while checking our phones. We encourage them to read while scrolling through headlines, messages and whatever else has managed to capture our attention.

I’m guilty of it, too. There are evenings when I fully intend to read a book, only to discover I’ve spent half an hour looking at things I neither needed nor particularly wanted to know.

Children notice these habits. If they see adults reading for pleasure, books become part of ordinary family life rather than another activity imposed on them.

That doesn’t mean we all need to sit around reading literary classics. Magazines, comics, graphic novels, biographies and books about subjects children genuinely enjoy all have their place.

And perhaps we should stop measuring reading purely by what children achieve academically. Literacy matters, of course, but there’s also value in enjoying a story simply because it’s funny, exciting or completely ridiculous.

I certainly didn’t spend my childhood reading because I was concerned about improving my vocabulary.

I read because I wanted to know what happened next.

When I think about my childhood, I don’t remember anyone telling me that reading would improve my concentration or make me more empathetic. Those may be valuable benefits, but they weren’t the reason I picked up a book.

I wanted to meet the characters, visit imaginary places and spend a little longer in worlds that existed entirely on paper. Sometimes I read because I was bored. Sometimes because I wanted company. And sometimes because the real world wasn’t nearly as interesting as the one waiting inside a book.

That’s what I’d like Cyrus to experience.

Not because I expect him to reject technology or spend every spare moment with his nose in a novel. He’s growing up in a different world, and I wouldn’t want to pretend otherwise.

But I do want him to know that entertainment doesn’t always need batteries, an internet connection or somebody telling him what to watch next.

Did you grow up visiting your local library, or were bedtime stories part of your family routine? If you’re raising children now, how do you encourage them to pick up a book when a screen is calling their name?

I’d love to know which childhood stories have stayed with you, and whether your children love them as much as you did.

National Literacy Trust: Children’s reading engagement, 2026

National Year of Reading 2026: Go All In

University College London: Social media use and depressive symptoms among adolescents

Sooper Books: Online children’s stories

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and questions from Saffron & Cyrus.