Everyone is wringing their hands about the dangers of smartphones and social media. Attentions spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter. The response? Banning cell phones in schools. Some teenagers are reducing the social media they interact with and turning off notifications. My teenage nephew only uses SnapChat and has all other notifications on his phone turned off. People of all ages are trying to get their attention back.
At the same time, many are looking to get back into reading fiction. Numerous studies show that reading fiction increases the reader’s empathy. As George R.R. Martin once wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” But how to start reading, or get back into it, when your attention has been hacked to pieces in our smartphone era? For a lot of people, reading a novel has become a real challenge. My suggestion is to start with short stories. These can be read online for free all over the internet. If you haven’t already, consider taking all the social media apps off your phone. Then when you pull out your phone for a quick hit of entertainment the next time you are bored, read a short story.
But how do I find good short stories to read? Funny you should ask… Starting tomorrow, each weekday at noon Eastern Time, I will be posting a short description of and a link to one of my favorite short stories that you can read online for free. These will be in a variety of genres but since my favorite is speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) they will be over represented. If you aren’t a fan of those kinds of stories, give these a chance. My focus on what I am choosing is good storytelling and good stories more than anything else.
My hope is that this will help a lot of people who wish to move away from having their attention grabbed by an algorithm that merely wants to monetize their eyeballs by enraging readers. Instead, exercise your empathy muscles by reading a short story every weekday during your lunch break. Perhaps this will be just the start you need to start reading more fiction.
