Before reading became so common, the peasantry of Europe was immune to the fads of the mad. But no one in the world is immune anymore. This deluge takes many forms, from the information on the net to incessant music from radios to the ubiquitous cellular phones that sit on our shoulders like little imps, never giving us a moment's peace. And our scientists are seriously talking about turning us into a race of cyborgs. They are far along into creating technology that we will actually wear on our bodies, a mechanization of the flesh that inundates us with a steady stream of information.
Eyeglasses there are even now that have little screens across which information flows perpetually.
Soon these and even more intrusive technologies will be de jure, some of it actually implanted under our skins. The information technology of the near future will make it worse. We are closer to an Orwellian world than we have ever been. That is why you must start them on their reading adventure. That is why the Democracy of the Dead, and all that we have learned from Orwell and Chesterton and Socrates, why all that has proved itself worthy of being preserved through the ages, is so deeply important to us today.