For Gen Z, this telenovela trope is overused — parang sirang plaka. And maybe that says something about Gen Z reading habits too.
But for some of us? We know it like the back of our hands.
Car crash. Staircase fall. Sudden disappearance. Memories wiped out — parang nag-factory reset.
And just like that: classic amnesia girl.
Cue the leading man doing dramatic (minsan, borderline unhinged) things just to make her fall in love all over again. Sweet? Maybe. OA? Soafer!
Oo, cliché. Lazy writing. Tsk, wala na bang bago?
But if you sit with it for a second, there’s something oddly familiar about it.
When memory disappears, love doesn’t magically return. The guy doesn’t win her back by guessing. He retraces what happened. He looks for clues. He revisits places that once meant something. He separates facts from chismis.
He doesn’t just react. Rather, he relearns.
Perhaps, that’s the most important part.
Because in real life, no one announces when you’ve slowly lost context. Walang car crash. Walang dramatic soundtrack.
You just scroll. React. Move on.
Until one day, it all feels too overwhelming. *sighs*
But Context Is Key
The more context you have, the less scary things become. But context doesn’t just appear sa #FYP mo. It’s not auto-generated. Kasi it takes work to look for it.
In a country that consistently ranks among the highest in the world for time spent on social media, most of what we know arrives in fragments — headlines, reaction clips, threads — then, change topic agad.
We’re informed, but at what cost? Fragmented info isn’t the same as clarity. No wonder Gen Z reading habits can feel hit-or-miss.
If you really wanna understand things — whether ba’t may pasok kahit holiday or ba’t ‘di na kasama sa planet si Pluto — you can’t doomscroll your way into deep learning. And one of the simplest ways to overcome that?
Reading.
Reading Is Like A Muscle You Train
Reading makes you slow down. It forces you to follow one idea from beginning to end instead of jumping to the next.
Research on deep reading shows that your brain works differently when you read deeply compared to when you skim digital feeds. It’s not just about absorbing words. It’s about building connections.
Reading helps you digest information instead of binge-consuming it.
If amnesia erases memory, reading restores context.
And like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets.
But here’s where things get tricky in today’s Gen Z reading habits struggles.
Even if you want to read more — even if you want to understand something specific, like why EDSA is no longer a non-working holiday — you still face one big question: Where do you even start?
Google gives you articles and social media gives you takes. However, if you actually want to sit with the story behind it, you need the right book.
Yet when there are hundreds of options, that can feel just as overwhelming as not knowing anything at all.
It’s the classic analysis paralysis. The more options you have, the harder it becomes to decide.
So, you stall.
You tell yourself, “Next time.” Pero next time never comes.
Finding The Right Starting Point
In those telenovelas, the leading man doesn’t randomly try things. There’s always that moment where he follows a thread — a memory, a place, a small clue that guides him where to go next.
Relearning isn’t chaotic. It’s directional.
Maybe reading works the same way.
You don’t need every book. You don’t need a massive list. You just need the right one for you — the one that matches what you’re curious about, what you’re trying to understand, what you’ve already read.
That’s where discoverability matters.
REKO was built around that idea. It’s an AI-powered eBook streaming app that helps you discover Filipino-authored books based on what you already like. Think Netflix but for books.
You can upload your shelf. It looks at your reading habits. It learns your preferences. Then it points you toward titles that actually make sense for you.
So, if you’re curious about Philippine political history, it narrows things down. Not to tell you what you should read. Just to help you figure out where to begin based on your actual taste!
Relearning Isn’t Starting From Scratch
It starts with the right something to build your reading habits — Gen Z ka man o hindi!
So, if you’re curious what that “right something” might look like for you, you can explore REKO and see what it recommends you.
No pressure. Just see where it leads.
Because you don’t need more prompts, but more better inputs.
