Cambridge scans the brains of 10,000 children: summer vacation does not decline, just do one thing

Hi, I'm Mario.

After the summer vacation, almost every family will prepare some books for their children and want to stick to their reading habits during the holidays. But many parents have found,Reading this has become extremely difficult.。

Many children would rather brush short videos for 2 hours than read them and do not want to read them. They cannot sit still after reading them for 10 minutes.

This situation actually exists all over the world.

According to a report just released by the National Literacy Trust in June this year, more than 120000 children aged 5-18 were surveyed and the results were:Only 1/3 of the children aged 8-18 said they liked reading.In 2005, the figure was 51.4 per cent.

The good news is that more children enjoy reading than last year.

The United States is similar.

A study published in iScience in 2025 analyzed 20 years of American time use data,The amount of time Americans spend reading for fun has fallen by more than 40% in 20 years.。

In other words, children all over the world are putting down books.

So this year and the next summer vacation, everyone is facing a problem is,In an era when short videos are smooth like cream, is it worth fighting with children for reading?

Cambridge University answered this question with brain scans of 10,000 children.

The study, published in the Psychological Medicine by a team of Cambridge and Fudan universities, used data from the US Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which involved clinical interviews, cognitive tests, psychological assessments and brain scans of more than 10,000 children.

The researchers divided the children into two groups: one group started reading "for fun" between the ages of 2 and 9, and the other group started reading very late or did not read at all.

When it came to adolescence, the gap was widened in all directions.：

Children who started reading idle books early had higher cognitive test scores, fewer depression and behavioral problems, and fewer attention problems. Brain scans showed,Their cerebral cortex is larger in area and volume., especially those areas that manage language and attention.

The team also did a causal analysis using Mendelian randomization, and concluded that this is not just a correlation between "smart kids who happen to be reading,Early reading for fun makes a real causal contribution to cognitive ability.

The study also found one thing, children who love reading idle books,Both weekdays and weekends have significantly less screen time and longer sleep.

Just like the research of Stanford professor David we wrote not long ago, books and screens rob the same piece of land in children's brains.

You don't use books to occupy, the screen will occupy.

■ David is very popular in academia, media and industry. He writes books, goes to TED, makes personal websites, takes part in top-stream podcasts, records popular science brain science, and has his own experiments. He is quite a maker.

However, the study also found an interesting conclusion,Reading is not the more the better。

The data show that the best cognitive benefits are around 12 hours a week, or almost 100 minutes a day. Beyond this amount, earnings fall instead of rising. The researchers' explanation is that reading too long means sitting too long,Squeeze out sports, dealing with real people, these same things that nourish the brain.

In other words, reading is like vitamins. It is useless to lack them and to overdose them.

This is good news for parents who plan for summer vacation. They don't need to press their children in front of their desks for a whole day. They can't move for an hour and a half every day, and they have already got all the benefits.

The rest of the time, it is good for the brain to let him run, swim and do nothing.

■ A blogger on the pipeline interviewed students at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton and Yale, asking them how many hours of sleep a day, most of them more than 6 hours, and athletes and students guaranteed 8-10 hours of sleep.

I also read about another new study that answers parents' biggest puzzle:Is reading on the iPad a book?

A team from the University of Valencia in Spain published a meta-analysis of 470000 people in the Review of the Research of Educational, which specifically compared the contribution of "screen reading" and "paper reading" to reading comprehension in their leisure time.

It was found that there was a positive correlation of moderate intensity between the reading volume and comprehension of paper leisure books, while the correlation between leisure reading on the screen was so small that it was almost negligible.

In terms of age, primary and junior high school,Screen leisure reading and reading comprehension are even negatively correlated.Screen reading will not start to become a full member until after Senior high school.

The researchers speculate that screens naturally train skipping, scanning and being distracted at any time, while deep understanding requires exactly the opposite muscle.

Therefore, the summer vacation advice for primary and junior high school children is also very clear,The same book, buy paper. Screen reading is cheap, and it is not too late for children to take up Senior high school.

However, the reason is clear,But the child just doesn't turn over the book, what should I do?

In the same survey of 110000 people in the UK, the researchers specifically asked children who did not like to read under what circumstances they would like to read. The two answers with the highest votes were:This book is related to my favorite movies, dramas (38.1 percent), or my hobbies (37.1 percent)。

And even children who claim to hate reading are secretly reading lyrics, comics and fiction.

In other words,The child doesn't hate reading, he hates what you think he should read 」.

Maybe we can do that. He brushed a summer movie and handed over the original work. He was addicted to dinosaurs, the universe, sneakers and a certain star, so he looked for books from this pit.

First let him taste the taste of "read in", other more difficult books, a little bit to conquer.

This is also really useful. The latest issue of the same survey in 2026 shows that children's interest in reading has stopped falling for the first time in five years,The attribution given by the investigator is that the book is right with the child's real interest.

Children who read regularly can also be healed and relaxed from books.

Therefore, putting the three studies together, the reading plan for this summer vacation is actually one sentence:More than an hour a day, reading paper, reading what he wants to read.

As long as the "reading for fun" thing actually happens, the brain will account for itself.

The annual "What American Children are Reading" book list

Just recently released, we will share in the near future