This year, the culture got serious about smartphone addiction. Or worrying about it, at least.

Last spring saw the publication of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Haidt was ubiquitous on the podcast circuit for a few weeks with his well-founded argument that we save our children by taking their smartphones away. Yesterday.

Over the past few weeks, reports have delivered awful news about the national decline in book reading. The Atlantic’s early October piece on elite college students’ failure to read books has been widely discussed. Ted Gioia has covered this topic with typical expertise, summarizing the book reading crisis and discussing the decline of the novel.

The trouble is, we tend to feel discouraged when news is so bad and remedies so few. Like most of you, I’ve long been worried about smartphone addiction and reading trends for myself, my kid and the culture. We know the severity of these problems because we’re living them.

A couple of weeks ago, a podcast discussion between Ezra Klein and Jia Tolentino presented a slightly different take on smartphones and reading.

Ezra and Jia questioned many working assumptions in our smartphone discourse. They suggested some of our anxiety around screen time for kids is a projection of guilt about our own screen habits. They critiqued how our achievement orientation leads us to position the smartphone problem as one of outcomes. In other words, we base our screen time recommendations on what the studies show: How does screen time affect school grades and behavior? Does it carry an increased risk of anxiety or depression?

               I’m compelled to read because I like to lose myself in a text so completely that the narrative voice enacts a gentle takeover of my mind.

But what if part of the problem can’t be measured? Ezra and Jia suggested an alternative to data-driven smartphone restraint might be pleasure or a return to doing what feels right. As Ezra said, for a million reasons he simply feels better when he reads a magazine than when he looks at his phone. Jia explained how pleasure is stronger than discipline in guiding her habits:

“The only way that I see out of this for my children is the only way that I see out of this for myself  … It’s only when the real physical world is brighter and more colorful and full of surprises. And luckily, I found something that holds my attention more than phones do: Going out dancing, being face to face with a friend, reading, writing, right? Listening to music.”

This rings so true for me that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I don’t put my phone down to read a book because reports tell me smartphone addiction and the reading crisis are worse than I think.

I put my phone down to read because reading feels right.

I believe Ezra and Jia are onto something with their assertion of pleasure as a stronger motivator than data and discipline in our attention struggles. Pleasure certainly motivates me, especially when it comes to reading. My education and experience include the disciplines of reading for craft as a writer and reading through various theoretical lenses as a critic. But that’s not why I’m driven to read.

My distinct pleasure in reading aligns with the ideas of—please forgive me for dropping in a spot of critical theory here—French literary theorist Roland Barthes. Specifically, ideas in his 1973 work The Pleasure of the Text. Barthes differentiates between standard reading pleasure and reading bliss or “jouissance.” Jouissance is the profound and even ecstatic state of reading immersion, those moments when we lose ourselves in a text to a degree that our conventional understanding and usual patterns of thought are reconfigured. It’s a transformative bliss.

I’m compelled to read because I like to lose myself in a text so completely that the narrative voice enacts a gentle takeover of my mind. Reading offers the pleasure of another way to see, feel and be in the world, redirecting my attention and enhancing my experience of daily life.

This blissful reading pleasure leaves a smartphone’s dopamine hits in the dust. It also bypasses any tendency to rebel against our better instincts. Any of you who were raised Catholic may relate. As soon as I think I should put my phone down and read a book, part of me wants to stay on my phone. If, on the other hand, I look at a novel and imagine being spellbound, so obsessed with its characters that they feel more real to me than myself, I’ll pick up the novel every time.

            This blissful reading pleasure leaves a smartphone’s dopamine hits in the dust.

The other evening, I looked up from my reading (Joy Williams’ new book of stories, Concerning the Future of Souls) and saw it was time to drive my son to his jazz ensemble rehearsal. He was out somewhere in the neighborhood, not answering his smartphone. I found him at the park basketball court, where he and a friend were at opposite ends, each hanging from a hoop. Yes, he’d lost track of time with goofy misbehavior—which I’ll take over zombified smartphoning any day.

Playing basketball with real friends in the physical world is more pleasurable for my kid than anything he can do on his phone. His compulsion to play basketball is stronger than his compulsion to pick up an iPhone. Another activity that sidelines his phone is writing songs on the guitar. Again, he enters a state of absorption more powerful than phone addiction when he writes a song.

I hope my son and all kids will discover many pursuits that supersede screen time. As much as any restraint around phones, I believe pleasure will keep them at these pursuits for life.