91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

We're scrolling more and reading less, but when it comes to standing up to fossil fuel companies, the arms industry, empire, and systemic injustice, it is fiction and non-fiction books that foster the right mentality and provide the necessary clarity and complex and transformative ideas.

In 2022, the average daily time spent on social media was the ever recorded. At the same time, surveys have that busyness (that is, workplace exploitation, unpaid labour, and dysfunctional social care systems) has led to a drop in leisure reading. In the United States, of people didn't read a book in 2022, and it seems there is a strong correlation between the change in social media and reading habits as well, since social media consumption has been shown to attention spans and promote a need for instant gratification.

The mixed impact of social media on movements and social change

Movements can use social media for networking, promoting events and causes, broadcasting marches and repression live, and sharing news and creativity (sometimes, if algorithms allow) and social media has been a key tool in key rebellions like the Arab .

However, because, on average (across 53 surveyed countries), social media is for 2 hours 20 minutes a day, its format is integrated into people's lives and shapes people's mental habits and approaches to life beyond their phones. Social media is structured to be a passive parade of banality, spoon feeding users very short, shallow, mediocre entertainment content interspersed with numerous ads. Hence, it fosters a mentality of impatience, indifference, inaction, individualism and escapism.

While relaxing or social in small and intentional amounts, the billionaire-owned platforms are more about mass production of misinformation, apathy and conformity. They have an impact beyond individual cognition, promoting consumerism (via extreme amounts of advertising) as a solution to any problem (buy bamboo toothbrushes to address the climate emergency). They have evolved to no longer show users much of what friends or connections have posted, and focus instead on algorithmic content and ads, limiting any agency users have over what they see.

These platforms don't just flood us with haircut videos, but also with racist comments and rape culture (objectification of women). The algorithms extremely misogynistic content and any content that reflects the prejudice of the corporate, pro-advertising algorithm creators. That includes deprioritising , and serious or "negative" content that may disrupt the pleasurable, escapist experience or encourage users to click away from the platform.

Junk food vs a nutritional diet

Unlike social media, books (aside from corporate-sponsored ones) obviously have no advertising content at all, and the well-written ones are more likely to be accurate, and composed, over many years, with intention, thought, and integrity.

Of course, a little junk food now and then, is okay, but our mental and physical health is affected when it (ie social media) is our main diet. Books, however, nurture the mind by promoting reflection, critical thought, complexity, and understanding. They have been found to help cognitive decline and fiction can socio-cognitive abilities.

The critical thought that books usually encourage (certain genres less so) is vital for then questioning the status quo, being less vulnerable to the manipulation of advertising and misinformation, developing strong ethics, and comprehending the root causes of problems and generating solutions.

Fiction is especially powerful for developing analogical reasoning - the ability to see commonalities between problems and situations - and, along with promoting empathy, these skills are essential for organising collective actions toward social, economic, and environmental justice. Social media has been vital for showing us what is happening in Gaza, but books can then help us understand colonialism and empire.

Fiction and non-fiction books for sustained resistance

Books are one of the best formats for deep engagement with an idea, providing insights that can endure for years rather than minutes. Fiction's memorable characters, imagery, and moments (who will ever forget Kafka's salesman waking up as a giant insect) can be powerful and move us in ways that memes and news briefs may not. Social struggle needs such enduring ideas because it is also a matter of sustained resistance. While some actions happen in just days, the organising, networking, trust, strength, and learning to get there builds up over decades.

Novels in particular, have the boldness and longevity to take on some of humanity's biggest dilemmas and troubles — and I'd love for my latest novel, to be part of that — to decode global inequality and the persistent trauma of empire and to create a new idea of what heroism is and who our heroes are. We all frequently get lost in and overwhelmed by daily difficulties, but novels can give us the global perspective we need to stay strong and focused.

Hope ahead

With genocide, violence, climate emergency, extreme exploitation and hunger, and so much more, it can be hard to believe that a better world is possible. Books, especially fiction, precisely by leaving much to a reader's imagination and by tackling those big ideas and taking us to other and new worlds, can empower us with possibilities.

Books especially can demonstrate to us that the current state of things is not infallible nor permanent. They can also deepen our sense of humanity and remind us what we are part of, and humanise those who have been demonised (as seen for example, in this recent by Gazan poet and writer, Nour El Assy).

There are few strict formulas in our activist movements, but a strong sense of humanity and of participating in the earth's ecosystem (rather than using it) + an analytical understanding of how power and justice works + action =  a compelling combination for successful social change.

When, after work, journalism, and activism, I have some time to read good books, I feel like I am breathing again. Our fiction is quietly there, stretching across borders and time, linking strangers, keeping us on track and, like a conjuring guide, showing us where we can go as its characters give real people their strength. 

The unseen heroes

In , I try to address what the world is going through, but using a tight and beautiful story and memorable characters. In broken Mexico City, a refugee with magical abilities longs for a bed. But as she navigates a world controlled by the oppressive System of Monsters, which criminalises migrants, limits housing access and destroys people and forests, she discovers that she must find and confront them before exhaustion diminishes her magic skills.

Other books and brilliant minds to consider for a dose of global reading that is thought-provoking, and dismantles the status-quo include; Ben Okri's the The Last Gift of the Master Artists, Joukhadar's The Map of Salt and Stars, anything by Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Maya Angelou, Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season (about violence and sexism in Mexico), Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by  R F Kuang, Otto Rene Castillo's poems ... and so much more.

These stories have the power to disturb the false harmonies of violent economies. Rock, with soft persistence, the punctuated arc of rigged elitism and celebrated plundering. Do not believe that there has been little social change because there's been no earthquake, no sudden rupture, recently. Understand that the way a new and gentle world is born will necessarily be to a different tune than wars and their destruction.

[Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist, and literary fiction author. Her latest novel is , and she writes the Global South newsletter, .]