Defund Libraries, Defund the Future

Panic, Panikos

As a teenager, Michael Clune rode his bike to the downtown public library to find more information about his recent panic attacks. As he tells it in his essay The Anatomy of Panic, Clune skimmed specialty books on panic attacks and even found relevance in a book about financial panics. Then chance led to Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which Clune believed he uniquely grasped the meaning of. 

Later, he and a friend spent lunch hour in the school library where they confirm that the word “panic” is indeed related to the Greek god Pan. They learn Pan was considered by Greeks to be the patron god of theatrical criticism. 

“Salome’s a play,” Lisa said slowly. “You interpreted the meaning of the play, which is the meaning of panic.You did theatrical criticism on Salome to understand panic, which comes from the god Pan, and Pan is the god of theatrical criticism.”

If Clune had an iPhone, this entire adventure could have been avoided, you might say. Had he just Googled it, he could have been spared the sensation of burning leg muscles during his hour-long bike tour of the city. His gaze never meeting the funny faces made at him from the other side of the library’s children’s section. His mind never made aware of the unknown unknowns that await on the bookshelf. His friend and he never sharing their surprise moment of etymological discovery together.

Great Rewiring

Young people today are experiencing severe depression and loneliness from overprotective environments which leave space for little more than screen time, contends Jonathan Haidt. TikTok and X seem to play a role in this mental health downturn and a majority of Gen Z say they wish these sites were never invented. But leaving social media can be painful for teens when so many of their peers use it daily, up to five hours on average. Even though it’s making them unhappy, they remain. 

I fully empathize as someone who wanted to leave Twitter/X, but was unable to successfully do so for fear of missing out. A mass #academictwitter exodus took place as ownership of the site changed hands and I was finally freed. It takes something big to overcome collective action problems. 

As a first step to do something about what Haidt calls the Rise of the Phone-based Childhood, there is bipartisan support to keep minors under 16 off social media and bar social media-delivery devices (phones) from schools. But leaving one set of behaviors behind is only one step in a two-step process. The second step is filling that vacuum with new activities. 

To fill in the void, I began spending more time outside and reading more. I’m a middle aged man and these are sensible habits to acquire. For young people leaving behind solo screen time, Haidt recommends more providing more unstructured free time away from parental supervision. 

Empty Vacuum 

The White House’s March 14, 2025 Executive Order to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services has led libraries to feel “expendable” and librarians feel their work to be harder than ever. Defunding is an existential threat to libraries and workers, which of course also means negative consequences for library users. I would go so far as to add that this risks the well-being of an entire generation of young people.

As states take first steps to steer young people away from extended solo screen time, defunding libraries may deprive communities of safe free range informational environments; libraries being one of the very few free third places that a child might ride their bike to. While I don’t take the maxim that if you build it, they will come as gospel, it is an irrefutable proof that if you destroy it, nobody can come. 

If we as a society want to encourage some level of risky play in our young people, like Haidt, we should want the to foster the same for their intellectual exploration. We coddle young people’s minds and make them less resilient when we busy ourselves banning books, defunding the places that house them and the staff that care for them. (We also risk worsening the growing trend of college students who cannot read an entire book.)

We are lonelier than ever. And lonely places are where Pan most enjoys inspiring fear. Minimizing loneliness, as a process, includes warding away sites of anxiety and preserving places that promote connection. For these reasons, we should be united in the effort to save libraries.

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