Devices down, eyes up: Why the AFT is fighting screens with books

At a Juneteenth celebration in Portland, Ore., families crowded into Lillis-Albina Park for live music, good food and stacks of brand-new, free books piled on tables beneath a distinctive red tent that has become known for the books, free blood pressure readings and friendly faces. 

“They know the red tent has the books,” says Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals President Sarina Roher. This is the fourth year OFNHP has filled its tent with books from the AFT’s Reading Opens the World initiative, which has distributed more than 11 million books across the country since 2012. 

The books never cease to draw a crowd, and every year, there is always a child who is astonished that they are free for the taking, Roher says. 

“I watched a little girl go back and forth deciding which book she wanted, and I just looked at her and said, ‘You can have as many as you want,’” Roher recounts. “Her eyes got so big. She was still so thoughtful about her selections, and later I saw her sitting in the middle of the lawn reading.”

The combination of books and blood pressure screenings makes perfect sense to Roher and OFNHP. It creates connections with the community and addresses two ailments that confront nurses and healthcare providers every day: waning literacy skills and shrinking attention spans.

Literacy has been one of the AFT's clearest priorities for decades. The union has trained teachers in the science of reading, stocked classrooms with books and resources, helped families build reading habits at home and advocated for policy that supports evidence-based approaches. The driver is that reading is more than fundamental—as OFNHP members know, it's a survival skill.

“We have patients who either don’t know how to read or don’t read well, and they have to navigate complicated medical forms,” Roher says. “It doesn’t matter how many extra steps we need to take during an appointment to make sure they understand the information; we still have the same amount of time with them that we have with a Ph.D. who can read and understand everything very quickly. The healthcare system doesn’t account for literacy skills.”

Roher says that on top of literacy, smartphones have become another barrier. “Smartphones are very much a problem, not only with the patient, but with the family. We’re trying to explain medication or a diagnosis, and people are distracted on their phones.”

Three crises wrapped into one: Literacy, attention and artificial intelligence

The issues OFNHP members are facing are start long before they ever see their patients: In 2024, only 30 percent of U.S. fourth-graders scored at or above proficient in reading. According to the latest federal data, 28 percent of working-age adults read at the lowest literacy level, an increase of almost 10 percentage points since 2017. Less than half of adults read within the top three levels. 

The ability to pay attention is also a concern. Of more than 3,000 educators surveyed around the world, 88 percent reported that their students’ attention spans were getting shorter. The problem reaches even the highest level: In 2024, professors at elite colleges, including the Ivy League, reported their students struggled to finish full-length books.

Cognitive science data suggest that smartphones and screens are part of the problem. Kids haven't lost the ability to pay attention—they’re just less willing to. With ever present distraction devices offering immediate gratification, they also haven't built the muscles for sustained focus. As a result, giving undivided attention to even a 14-line sonnet has become a hefty ask. 

AI adds another facet to the problem. Cognitive offloading, the term for delegating mental tasks to something external, seems relatively innocuous when it refers to using a calendar or a calculator. But now that students have tools that can read, write and analyze for them, they have the option to bypass the hard work of learning altogether. 

AFT President Randi Weingarten refers to the introduction of AI as a “tech earthquake” that is reshaping how children think and learn. The response, she says, is not nostalgia for a simpler time of pens and three-ring binders. It’s a structural intervention that ensures educators remain at the center of the classroom, that skill development drives curriculum and that technology serves learning rather than replacing it. 

‘Devices down, eyes up’

Weingarten revealed a 10-point “devices down, eyes up, hands-on” plan in May that calls for strong literacy and numeracy skills, relevant curriculum, hands-on learning and reducing—or in some cases eliminating—screen time. She also called for a “gold standard” in privacy and safety for AI in classrooms, building off the AFT’s “Commonsense Guardrails for Using Advanced Technology in Schools,” a document that emphasizes privacy and prioritizes human interaction over AI instruction.

Weingarten’s instinct on reducing screen time and AI exposure to promote literacy already has data behind it. One year into its bell-to-bell cellphone ban, Dallas schools are seeing a 24 percent increase in library book checkouts. 

That is why initiatives like Reading Opens the World and the devices down, eyes up approach are critical supports to each other. Once the devices go down, the books need to be there, especially in neighborhoods where books are a luxury. 

Books as an intervention 

For OFNHP, distributing books is about building community connections in the short term and building patients’ literacy skills in the long term. It’s a building block toward ensuring patients can understand the instructions on a prescription bottle. Roher recognizes the value.

“I wish we could do it more often,” she says. “But I’m glad that we at least hold this one event every year and give out as many books as we can.”

[Melanie Boyer]