I watched Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 with my oldest son today—mostly because he’s not quite old enough to watch it alone. Sitting there in the cinema, half following the film and half keeping an eye on his reactions, I found my mind drifting toward a few broader trends I’ve been noticing. To keep this post from sprawling into a book of its own, I’ll focus on one topic in particular: kids and reading. (Perhaps the other reflections will turn into future posts.)
Growing Up with Books vs. Growing Up with Screens
We put a lot of emphasis on getting our kids to read. With Luxembourgish schools exposing them to several languages, we don’t limit reading to only one. At home, for reasons too long to unpack here (but maybe worth a post at some point), English has become the primary family language—despite neither me nor my wife being native speakers. Unsurprisingly, English has also become the main language of reading.
When I was young, you could hardly pry books out of my hands. My wife was the same. There were long stretches of childhood when I’d spend entire afternoons—and sometimes evenings—devouring anything from fantasy novels to history books. Two or three hundred pages a day wasn’t unusual, and more on weekends.
I do think the pace of life has changed. It feels harder now for anyone—adult or child—to settle into hours of uninterrupted reading. Screens compete for attention on every front: streaming, games, phones, tablets, you name it. I had computers early on, but games were limited at first. Even later, when I had full access to Diablo, Civilization II, and anything else that would run on my trusty old PC, I kept reading. Gaming influenced my time, but it never replaced books.
Reading Aloud, Reading Together… but Not Reading Alone?
My own love of books was shaped very directly by my mother reading to me and my brother every single day. That ritual sparked the desire to read on my own, and once the spark was lit, it burned wildly. I now read to my younger kids almost every night. My youngest son constantly begs for “just one more chapter,” even when I strongly suspect it’s an elaborate bedtime-stalling tactic.
But unlike my childhood experience, the nightly reading didn’t automatically translate into them wanting to read solo. My brother never developed a love for reading either, so clearly environment isn’t everything.
The encouraging part is that my oldest son finally seems to have found his own rhythm. Completely unprompted, he’s now working his way through Sanderson’s Mistborn books—hardly the lightest material to start with. Watching that shift has made me reflect on how cyclical some of these concerns really are.
The Eternal Complaint About “Kids These Days”
Which brings me to a quote often attributed to Socrates:
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority… They contradict their parents, chatter before company… and tyrannize their teachers.”
Whether or not Socrates actually said this (historians have their doubts), it perfectly captures a timeless truth: every generation is convinced the next one is doomed.
Maybe nothing fundamental has really changed. Maybe kids today aren’t less patient, less focused, or less book-inclined—they’re just growing up in a different environment, the same way we did, and the same way people did thousands of years ago. And parents—me included—will always worry, observe, overthink, and compare.
Closing Thoughts
If Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 accomplished anything beyond entertaining my son, it was giving me an excuse to reflect on these things. And seeing him voluntarily pick up hefty fantasy novels on his own feels like a reminder that interests can bloom in their own time.
Perhaps the real trend isn’t that kids have changed.
Perhaps it’s simply that we all eventually reach the age where we start sounding suspiciously like ancient philosophers.
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