Chill, Your Child´s ´Scattered´Brain is just returning to Normal

Let me tell you something that made me deeply uncomfortable when I first realized it.

I'm a father. I worry about my kids. I worry about their attention spans, their screen time, their ability to sit still and focus. The ability to sit with a book and allow the words to take them into an imagined world within their minds. Add to that the constant barrage of expert educators and neuroscientists claims that this shift away from long-form print is fundamentally altering how children learn, think, and interact with the world.

That overwhelming panic is something every parent deals with today. Day after day, we wonder: are our children losing something because they do not want to read, or are their brains being rewired for the worse due to their constant use of electronic devices?

Then I take a deep breath and I ask myself a simple question that changes everything;

How long have humans actually been reading?

Not thinking deeply. Not creating. Not focusing. Just... reading. Here's what I found.

The Timeline That Shook Me

Homo sapiens have existed for roughly 300,000 years. Writing is only about 5,000 years old. 

Mass literacy, the idea that everyone should read, is barely 150 years old.

Let that sink in. 

For 99.9% of human existence, reading was not a thing. Most people never learned how. They didn't need to. They survived, thrived, built civilizations, created art, passed down knowledge, and raised children, all without reading a single word.

Dr. Maryanne Wolf opens her landmark 2007 book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, with a very famous modern line: "We were never born to read." The human brain was not designed for reading. There is no "reading gene." The brain has to hijack the visual cortex (designed to spot predators) and the auditory zone (designed to hear danger) just to process text. Reading is a cognitive hack, a brilliant one, but a hack nonetheless.

So when I worry that my kids can't sit still with a book for two hours, I have to ask myself: Is that really the natural state of the human mind?

The answer is no.

What the Brain Actually Evolved To Do

For 300,000 years, a "good brain" was a scanning brain. Survival required:

- Looking around constantly

- Switching tasks quickly

- Monitoring multiple environmental inputs

- Reading social cues in real-time

- Adapting to changing conditions

Our ancestors were not scatterbrained. They could track prey for days, remember the location of water sources, read the weather, and pass down complex knowledge through stories and songs. They were doing deep work, just not with words on a page.

The capacity for deep thinking is ancient. It's wired into our biology. It's the engine of human survival and creativity. 

To validate what I just said, here's another realization: Homo erectus, about a million years ago, sat in front of a pile of rocks. They scanned them and selected them. Then they picked the ones that felt right, the ones with the right weight, the right edge, the right potential.

Then they spent hours, maybe days, striking those rocks. Shaping them. Creating tools that would change their world. That is deep thinking. Not reading. Not books. Not libraries.

Deep, sustained, focused attention to something complex, something that requires patience, skill, and the ability to hold a vision in your mind while your hands do the work.

Reading just borrowed that capacity. It didn't invent it.

So What's Actually Happening to Our Kids?

Here's where I changed my mind. We've built an entire cultural narrative around the idea that reading ´creates´ deep thinking. That without books, the mind degrades. That the printed word is the only path to wisdom, empathy, and intelligence.

But that's backward. Deep thinking created the ´capacity´ for reading. Reading is not the cause. It's a vehicle, a powerful one, but still just one among many. The following timeline shows the reality of what was the brain´s main function at that specific moment in time.

300,000 BCE – 3,000 BCE | Our brain focused on scanning, social, and practical awareness. | Everyone used it.

3,000 BCE – 1850 CE | Reading (elite) + Scanning (everyone) | A tiny minority could read.

1850–2000 CE | Reading becomes aspirational | Mass literacy arrives. We all should read.

2000–present | Reading + Scanning (both accessible) | Our kids. The new generation.

We have never had a generation that grew up fluent in both modes from childhood. The experiment is genuinely new. And we're panicking because it looks different, not because it's worse.

The Empathy Question

One of the most common arguments for reading is that it builds empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. 

But does it? The research is more complicated than we've been told.

Cognitive scientists like Maryanne Wolf argue passionately that reading, particularly literary fiction, builds a "deep reading circuit" in the brain, one that enables critical thinking, empathy, and the capacity to inhabit other minds.

And she's not wrong. Studies by Kidd & Castano (2013), found that reading literary fiction temporarily improved participants' ability to infer others' mental states. The theory is that literary fiction is more complex, ambiguous, and psychologically rich, requiring readers to actively infer character motivations, emotions, and unspoken intentions.But here's where the story gets more interesting.

The effect is small and short-lived. Other studies have failed to replicate it. And correlation is not causation. People who read a lot tend to be more empathetic, but they also tend to be more educated, more verbal, and more socially privileged. Reading doesn't guarantee empathy. Reading can build it, if you engage deeply, reflect, and wrestle with the material. If you skim to finish the book or pass the test, it does nothing.

And here's the key insight for our kids: If empathy comes from deep engagement with complex human experience, then reading is not the only path.

- A film that makes you ´feel´ with the characters = empathy

- A conversation that requires you to understand another = empathy

- A game that forces moral decisions = empathy

- A piece of music that evokes emotion = empathy

- A piece of art that captures a moment = empathy

Reading is not sacred. It's a tool. And our kids, immersed in multiple narrative forms, may be developing empathy through different vehicles, not fewer.

What This Means for Our Parenting

So what do we actually do with this information?

I don't think we throw out books. I don't think we should stop reading to our kids or encouraging them to read. Reading is a powerful tool. One that trains the brain in linear, long-form critical thinking. It allows the mind to build and comprehend highly complex, long-term systems.

But I also don't panic when they're on screens. Because I now understand something I didn't before: The deep thought mode is not dying. It's migrating.

Our kids are not losing the ability to think deeply. They might be losing the ´specific vehicle´ of reading, but they're gaining others.

- Deep video games = sustained attention to complex systems

- Creative software = making, building, shaping

- Collaborative projects = shared focus, co-creation

- Music production = pattern, timing, emotion, structure

Of course, as a parent I do want them to read, and I do read with them. I am actively doing it, but in a different and tone down way. I actually grab a book, something that aligns with their age and interests, and then we start to read, but here is the key, 15 to 20 minutes at a time. They can use and interact with the computer, but at intervals of 40 - 60 minutes, I make them stop and read or do anything else but their phone or laptops. 

Ah, they don´t want to do anything? That's fine too. They can just lay down and watch the ceiling and count to 100 and finally fall asleep. Like I said, that´s fine too.

What Dr. Maryanne Wolf Would Say

I should be fair to Dr. Maryanne Wolf. She and I would have an interesting conversation. She would agree that the brain was not "designed" for reading. She would agree that reading is a recent cultural invention. She would even agree that our kids are navigating a new cognitive landscape.

But she would push back hard on the conclusion.

For Dr. Wolf, the "vehicle" is not neutral. The act of reading, decoding linear, complex text over a sustained period, doesn't just ´use´ a pre-existing "deep thinking" mode. It actually ´builds´ a unique "deep reading circuit" in the brain. This circuit gives us the ability to follow a long argument, engage in critical analysis, and develop the capacity for "cognitive patience" and "contemplative thought."

She fears that if we don't use this circuit, we risk "atrophy" of the very cognitive abilities it powers. A deep video game or conversation might be engaging, but it's not exercising the brain in the same way as reading, and therefore may not cultivate the same kind of attention and thought.

But here's where I push back.

She would also applaud what we're doing as parents. Her proposed solution is to cultivate a "biliterate brain", one fluent in both the deep, analytical mode of print and the rapid, skimming mode of digital media. She prioritizes teaching deep reading ´first´ to build that essential cognitive foundation.

Our kids are already on that path, because we're having these conversations with them.

The Bottom Line

I used to panic about screens. I used to think my kids were losing something essential. Now I see it differently. The mutation is real. Whether it's evolutionary or just ´different´ depends on one thing: whether we can integrate the old brain with the new tools.

The network isn't going away. The question is: will our kids master it, or will it master them? 

They are not broken. They are the first generation to be raised with both the ancient scanning brain at a modern full-mode and the modern reading brain, and they are learning, with our help, to use both.

Once again, the deep thought mode is not dying. It 's migrating. And we as parents get to help them find the new path.

The experiment is unfolding right now. In our homes. In our conversations. In the choices we make about what we model and what we teach. All parents aren´t just watching the experiment. We're running it.

Thanks for reading. Abrazos.

Diego Rojas