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TLDR

 Meagan Piantanida - My Discovery Destination!

This will not come as a shock to most of you, but we are living in a world of instant gratification. We want what we want, and we want it five minutes ago: food, entertainment, and even a cure for the sniffles. Then there are answers to any of the questions we have. We want our information NOW. 

Because information is available at our fingertips–literally, because not a single one of us ever puts down our mini-computer, also known as a phone–the answer to any query we have is utterly, completely, and directly in our hands. 

While having the world available at the touch of a screen is an awesome thing, this age of cyberspace resources has created a planet full of some very impatient people. We have SO MUCH data right in front of us that many of us experience information overload. Does this sound familiar to you? You enable the recorder on your phone, ask Google or Siri a question, click on one of the provided links, pull up some text on the internet that will allow you to read and discover the answer you desire, and do absolutely…NOTHING. 

Why? TLDR. 

What? Acronymically speaking, it means “too long, didn’t read.” You can ask a Generation Z’er what it is, and they’ll probably laugh because they are quite familiar with the process of TLDR. 

In honor of Doctor Seuss, the month of March is designated as National Reading Month. We are encouraging each and every smartphone owner (as well as everyone else) to be proactive in a collective effort to combat the awful disease of TLDR. Put down your phone. (But before you do, take the March reading challenge with Wattson! by joining the “*Oh! The Places You'll Go!-2023” Discovery Hunt on the Goosechase app. Search with the game code “SEUSS”, OR “SEUSS2” for Spanish.) Read a book–a paper one, if you’ve got one. Read aloud for 20 minutes to important people in your life. Discuss together what you’re reading. Grab for yourself the benefits that reading can bring. Don’t let the love of reading and books themselves become long lost relics of the TLDR era.

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