Post #682230

2025-07-12 10:54 UTC

In the 1700s, teens were accused of being… addicted to novels. Not alcohol. Not gambling. Reading. Across Europe, a strange fear gripped adults. Young people were devouring novels at a pace never seen before. They read at the dinner table, in bed, even while walking through the streets. This wasn’t seen as a harmless hobby. It was called “reading fever” or “book addiction.” Some claimed it would rot their minds. Others worried it would damage morals, ruin posture, or lead to dangerous daydreaming. Fiction was accused of causing everything from laziness to madness. Moralists and educators sounded the alarm. Pamphlets warned parents. Schools debated limits. It wasn’t just what teens were reading — it was who was writing it. Books like Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) or Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) stirred emotion, imagination, and independence. They were often written by or for women — a major threat to the era’s social order. But despite the panic, teens kept reading. And quietly, something revolutionary was happening. This “reading mania” helped fuel mass literacy, gave rise to the modern novel, and encouraged generations to explore new ideas through story. The so-called crisis? It laid the foundation for modern literature as we know it. Funny how things change. Today, we beg kids to pick up a book. Had you ever heard about the 1700s reading panic? What do you think society would say if teens got “addicted” to books again?

Replies (20)

@bytebro@mastodonapp.uk 2025-07-12 14:41

@Doug73 "Today, we beg kids to pick up a book." Except of course in those places that just ban the books. And even there, access still exists 😀

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@zakalwe@plasmatrap.com 2025-07-12 14:52

@Doug73@mindly.social I'm sure the US right would be lining up to be the first to say, "Ban them ALL!"

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@fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk 2025-07-12 14:52

@Doug73 tangentially: bicycle panic

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@miki@dragonscave.space 2025-07-12 15:00

@Doug73 Whatever the kids are doing, there's somebody panicking about it. First it was socrates ranting about how young people's memory deterriorates because they rely on writing instead of learning things by heard. Then it was books. Then it was "devil's pedestrian-killing machines", which we now just call "bicycles." Then it was vinyl records and the unknown impact of hearing the exact same sound more than once on the human soul. Then it was radio, TV, cigarettes, earphones and the walkman, Dungeons and Dragons, heavy metal, Gameboys and pokemon, sweets, cable, calculators, computers and game consoles, strangers on the internet, posting pictures to Facebook, now it's Chat GPT and Tiktok. Out of those, cigarettes and sweets were the only two that actually had a kernel of truth to them.

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@bogosity@im-in.space 2025-07-12 20:25

@Doug73 Best moral panic ever.

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@tokensane@mastodon.me.uk 2025-07-12 20:44

@Doug73 For a full history of this strange slow motion moral panic, see https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/49661

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@Lstn2urmama@mstdn.ca 2025-07-13 02:46

@Doug73 take away electricity,transportation and all machines from after those times and it may happen again ...🤣😂🤣 not likely unless we had a worldly disaster and they had nothing else to hide into ... Pioneers were the last to spend time in books when there days of work ended if not too tired as their day ended or even if a book was available Computers cellphones would have to not exist either ...

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@Ophitoxaemia@mastodon.social 2025-07-13 02:49

@Doug73 My 12 year called books "crack you can read"

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@BigShellEvent@toot.cat 2025-07-13 03:12

@Doug73 as an adult addicted to reading (the real behaviour addiction kind), I just wish modern day people stop glorifying reading like it's some form moral superiority. If it's compulsive, out of control, and we are miserable because of it, it is genuinely a behaviour addiction.

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@vick21@mastodon.social 2025-07-13 04:56

@Doug73 Love it. Where's the source so that I can repost all around?

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@3TomatoesShort@disabled.social 2025-07-13 08:13

@Doug73 Schools will still bring it up as an "issue", if your kids choose to read at recess and lunch rather than doing stuff with other kids. I wasn't really sure what to say to that other than "yes, that's how I spent recess and lunch as a child, too?" 😅

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@Heliograph@mastodon.au 2025-07-13 08:38

@Doug73 lol this was really a thing 😆 jeez were just doing the same thing over and over again https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-novels-will-destroy-your-mind-796f3cdc8d5f #reading #misconceptions

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@richardnosworthy@toot.wales 2025-07-13 08:43

@Doug73 am surprised many families could afford this! How available were books in the 1700s?

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@peterbrown@mastodon.scot 2025-07-13 09:20

@Doug73 reading addiction still happens. Children who are not stupefied by the television often get into novels to an almost obsessive extent.

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@js@snac.lab8.cz 2025-07-13 09:26

What do you think society would say if teens got “addicted” to books again? Must be those japanese smut comics!

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@pipe_dreams@mstdn.social 2025-07-13 09:46

@Doug73 the sentiment that the youth is lazy and rotten goes back to cuneiform tablets so some of the oldest writing we have ... Greek philosophers complained about young ppl. Puts things into perspective Also mobile phone usage and "killer" games come to mind in the more modern day. So if you feel the urge to complain about youth or get complained about, you are neither the first nor the last. Find tolerance for your older/younger folks.

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@sabrinaweb71@sociale.network 2025-07-13 10:12

@Doug73 something in this post made me think about the banned books in Florida (I have a list somewhere, by the way, and plan to read them)

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@Muiris@mastodon.ie 2025-07-13 11:39

@Doug73 My daughter (13) has this addiction. She reads 3 or 4 books per day, gets irritated when she runs out of books. It’s so serious we have to actively stop her reading to remind her to eat, wash, move (so she doesn’t get cramp) and also meet her friends. Although it’s an addiction, it’s one of the best addictions to have. 📚

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@chewie@mammut.gogreenit.net 2025-07-14 21:31

@Doug73 Similar with #music. A while ago I watched the Ken Burns: Jazz series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(miniseries) It was really good and I don't even like Jazz that much! In one episode they showed newspaper articles from the '30s saying how the genre and recreational drugs associated with it was going to ruin a generation. Sounds like a similar drama that was unfolding in the early '90s about #rave music. "Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose"...

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@EmeraldRose@dragonscave.space 2025-07-12 20:00

@Doug73@mindly.social I'm already addicted to books. I don't know why they would think it was horrible that teens were addicted to literature. I think I would have loved the books coming out then, but I read every book in my jonrah I can get my hands on and I adore reading. It fueled my passion for learning and I had more of a comprehention of words in the 9th grade then I probably should have. I think by the time I graduated high school, I had a college comprehention reading level in the senior catigory, so yes, books helped me a lot. They helped me grow. I also like to write, so it gave me the thirst for story telling too.

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