There is growing frustration in South African classrooms where learners no longer sustain reading the way previous generations did.

Ask them to work through a long passage, and many lose focus within minutes. Yet the same learners can spend hours on TikTok, scroll endlessly on Instagram, or remain fully absorbed in a game on a PS5.

Dr Remeredzayi Gudyanga, lecturer in Curriculum studies and Higher Education at the Faculty of Education at the University of the Free State (UFS), says what happens in classrooms, reflects a broader global shift.

Reading persists, but its form has changed. Long-term studies in the US and Europe show that the proportion of adolescents who read for pleasure daily has declined sharply, from about 35% in the 1980s to roughly 14% today. Fewer learners now engage with long-form texts, and sustained reading is increasingly replaced by shorter, fragmented digital content.

It is important to distinguish between different aspects of reading. Basic reading ability, the capacity to decode words, remains relatively stable in many systems, despite recent declines. What is eroding more clearly are reading for pleasure and reading comprehension.

Reading for pleasure supports vocabulary growth and long-term academic success.

Reading comprehension involves following arguments, interpreting meaning, and engaging critically with texts. It is this deeper form of reading that is under pressure globally.

In South Africa, the situation is more severe. The issue is not only that learners read less for pleasure, but that many struggle with reading itself. Around 80% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, even when they can recognise words. This places South Africa among the lowest-performing countries globally in reading literacy.

Here, the distinction between reading and comprehension is critical. Many learners can decode text but cannot extract meaning, follow ideas, or engage with written arguments. Without this, reading does not function as a tool for learning. It becomes a barrier.

Reading remains central to the business of learning, but the conditions that once supported it are no longer stable, and emerging forms of engagement do not fully replicate its role in developing sustained attention and deep understanding.

Digital environments are evolving faster than schools can respond, shaping learners’ habits and expectations from an early age. The result is a growing disconnect between the world learners live in and the one they are taught in.

Education is no longer leading learning. It is chasing it.

This shift is driven by two forces: the move from books to digital platforms, and the design of those platforms to capture and hold attention through constant stimulation.

Generational differences help to explain part of this shift. Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) and Generation X (1965–1980) grew up in print-dominated environments that trained patience and sustained focus. Millennials (1981-1996) are caught up in between transitions, having grown up with books, but came of age alongside the rise of the internet. Generation Z (1997–2012) and especially Generation Alpha (born after 2012) are born in constant connectivity, where short videos, notifications, and gaming dominate and shape attention. Reading is no longer the primary way of accessing knowledge. It competes with faster, more stimulating alternatives such as TikTok videos and YouTube reels.

This is not just a generational difference

Digital platforms such as TikTok videos and YouTube reels are designed to hold attention. One piece of content leads to the next, each slightly more compelling than the last. Gaming environments follow a similar logic, offering immediate rewards and continuous feedback. These systems draw on dopamine-mediated reward cycles, where repeated stimuli reinforce behaviour and encourage return. Over time, this creates powerful feedback loops that condition attention to expect speed, novelty, and instant gratification. While not addiction in a clinical sense, these patterns share features of addictive behaviour, with users repeatedly drawn back into the cycle.

When learners move from these high-stimulation screen-based environments into classrooms, they often struggle to sustain concentration in the absence of constant feedback. Outside, they engage with fast, responsive systems. Inside, they are expected to slow down and work through extended texts. The contrast is sharp. The forms of attention shaped outside the classroom do not match what is required inside it. Even older generations, once shaped by print-based habits, increasingly find it difficult to complete reading books, not because texts have changed, but because the conditions that support attention have.

This is not simply distraction, but a reconfiguration of attention itself, shaped by repeated exposure to dopamine-driven cycles. 

Reading requires sustained focus

Where these capacities are underdeveloped, comprehension suffers. Learners may follow words on a page but struggle to build meaning across longer passages.

Yet learners are not incapable of focus. Many sustain intense concentration in digital environments. The difference lies in how that attention is structured. In digital spaces, focus is externally driven and continuously reinforced through reward. Reading a book, by contrast, depends on internally sustained focus. In slower tasks, attention therefore feels effortful and less engaging. What is emerging is a shift from deep, self-directed concentration to more distributed, stimulus-responsive forms, suited to environments that reward speed, interaction, and immediacy. What feels natural outside school becomes effortful inside it. 

This raises an important question. Should education adapt to learners’ current patterns of attention, shaped by digital environments, or maintain traditional expectations?

The answer lies in holding both positions in tension

Education must respond to how learners’ attention is shaped, but it cannot be confined by it. Its role is to extend learners’ capacity for sustained focus and deep engagement. This means helping learners understand their own attention, why fast-moving content feels effortless and reading feels demanding, and how to stay with complex ideas.

Restricting devices may help at the margins, but it does not address the underlying issue. Even when devices are removed, the expectation of rapid stimulation remains. Parents have a role to play in regulating screen-time, but responsibility cannot rest there alone. Governments and social media companies are increasingly being called to account, particularly in contexts such as the US. Protecting learners in a digital age requires broader accountability.

What is required is more deliberate work within education itself. The cultivation of sustained attention must be reinforced with some renewed urgency. In a world of constant stimulation and instant gratification, education must ensure that learners can sustain attention across both digital and print environments, to read with focus, and to think beyond the surface.