While the nascence of modern technology has undoubtedly brought humanity more connection than ever before, it has also severed our connection to the beautiful world of books.
“Grapes of Wrath?” Check out TikTok and its never ending scrolls of trending dances, skincare reviews and debauchery instead. “Where the Red Fern Grows?” Try Instagram Reels and mom content galore. “1984?” Sign in to your family’s Netflix account and rewatch “Breaking Bad” for the thirteenth time.
As we become more entranced by the avalanche of dopamine hits that social media and other digital outlets provide so readily, our brain’s “yay, you got it!” receptors have been fried to oblivion. As much as you’re probably tired of the less technologically-advanced boomer generation claiming your attention spans are decreasing because of those d–n phones, the science backs their ridicule.
On average, Gen-Zers (that’s us, folks) read a mere seven minutes a day. That’s compared to the Silent Generations’ (those in the 78+ age group) 35 minutes a day.
If you can’t last 13 seconds watching a TikTok, you absolutely cannot trudge through one chapter of a classic. It is this very inability to stay locked in that has torn people from the pages to the screens, a travesty unrivaled by any other social phenomena.
For the J.D. Williams Library at Ole Miss — a treasure trove of books ancient and modern, non-fiction and fantastical, scientific and satiric, risque and prudent — there seems to be less and less appreciation for this sanctuary other than its existence as one of the silent spots with an adjacent Starbucks on campus.
As our collective attention is diverted from intellectual expansion to brain rot, our appreciation of libraries and the literature within is shrinking. Each and every one of the 3,821,704 volumes at our university are a unique outlet for discovery, but they’ve begun collecting dust on the shelves.
I fear that if we do not make an active effort to “get off those d–n phones,” we’ll lose an essential instrument of connection to the world.
This catastrophe creeps beyond the plastered brick and marbled columns of Ole Miss’ Library — it has leaked into our lecture halls, distorting syllabi and forcing faculty to change their teaching styles for the worse. Ninety-seven percent of professors believe it is “important” or “very important” for students to complete all of their assigned reading before class, but only 3% of students actually do.
To some extent, this is understandable. The amount of reading the average professor assigns is daunting. The only reason we’ve been wired to see it that way, however, is that we’ve stopped reading altogether. In a world where the younger generations have detached themselves from literature, texts from classes you once found fascinating seem utterly mundane.
The bottom line is, if we don’t pick up a novel every once and a while instead of doom scrolling for a consecutive eight hours — we all are victims to the algorithmic monster — what we see as monotonous will lose even more of its allure.
So I implore you to pick up a book. Even if it’s 30 minutes of reading a day, rebuilding the love for literature that has been leached away by modern distractions is essential to bettering ourselves, reinvigorating the classroom experience and centering our society around libraries once again.
Kadin Collier is a freshman Arabic and international studies double major from Tokyo.
