I can still conjure up the feeling of being read to as a child. Sitting on my mother’s lap, one hand wrapped around her arm holding the book. The other hand resting on my chest with my thumb in my mouth. The smell of the book, the feel of the paper, the crack of the spine. Mostly, I recall the sound of her voice reading to me in hushed tones with the intention of putting me to sleep. It was our nightly ritual. I loved that I got her all to myself. As I grew up, I always associated books with the presence of a loving parent, the safety I felt being cradled by my mom. And thus, a reader was born. I spent hours of my childhood with my head buried in a book. When my mom opened up a children’s book store, I spent weekends working there, sharing my favorite books with anyone who came in to shop. Nowadays, I find it harder and harder to connect with those feelings. It’s harder to find time to read, and harder still to quiet the world in the same fashion.
“The development of technology has happened faster than our brains can evolve to support that kind of constant connection and input.”
I used to wonder at the lives my grandparents lived. How they lived through wars and inventions like the TV and computer and how difficult it must have been for them to move into the future while missing the simplicity of the past. And now I get it. Technology has advanced so drastically in my own lifetime. With the development of artificial intelligence, I’m starting to understand what life must’ve been like for them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not lamenting technology or burying my head in the sand. But, I do think that the connection that technology promised can feel overwhelming. The development of technology has happened faster than our brains can evolve to support that kind of constant connection and input.
Our brains evolved for what anthropologist Robin Dunbar called “Dunbar’s number”—roughly 150 meaningful social connections. And yet, the average Facebook user has 338 friends. But here’s the problem: your brain doesn’t know the difference between a casual Instagram “like” and a genuine social interaction. Each notification, comment or message triggers a small social response. Your brain tries to track all these people, evaluate your standing with them, and maintain those relationships—but it simply can’t. And this is just social media. Add in all of the other bits of information we’re bombarded with on an hourly basis and our brains are overloaded.
In that framework, books—real, physical books you can hold—are nostalgia at its purest. Books are symbols of a slower, more intentional time. Not just the tangible aspects of a book: weight, smell, progress that you can see, but the notion that we can escape the technological world to simplify our lives and dive into a great read. The rhythm of reading is an escape too. The book demands your full attention. There are no links to click and shift our focus. They provide a different meter to our attention span. A solid narrative to follow rather than the chaos of our feeds. Books are a radical escape!
If one book provides an escape, it’s no wonder I’m drawn to buildings full of books. Libraries are a sort of temple for worshiping a simpler time. They’re one of the few remaining quiet spaces. Analog. Free. Communal. Library usage among young people is actually increasing, which surprises a lot of people who assume libraries are dying in the digital age. Recent data shows Gen Z is visiting libraries more than millennials did at the same age. BookTok (TikTok’s book community) has made reading cool again among teens. Young people are buying and borrowing physical books at surprising rates—they want the tactile experience, the ability to disconnect from screens and, honestly, books as aesthetic objects for their rooms and social media because they represent a simpler time.
As I think back on those sweet moments of childhood sitting in my mother’s lap, I realize that what I’m nostalgic for, and what I hope to evoke when I sit down with a book, is a return to presence, depth, connection. A moment to be enthralled by a story of someone else’s life. An escape. Because a book is not just a book, but a portal back to our humanity. And I’m a revolutionary just by turning a page.
