Protesting the Decline of Reading
Protesting the Decline of Reading
College Students Are Reading Less Than Ever, Same with Adolescents, Same with All of Us. What’s Going On?
I posit we do more of different types of reading than we used to.
We read more things online than in traditional books, this often includes reading traditional books in an electronic format.
I've also read that subtitles are incredibly popular now, even for watching shows and movies in your own language. Foreign shows are more popular than ever, as well.
Reading novels isn't done as much but I think just the nature of why we read has changed.
It's just not the same for cognitive development and engagement.
Skimming headlines, occasional (short ) articles, and reading pithy comments is vastly different from sustained reading of a single text.
The first is what my dopamine-seeking ADHD slips into multiple times daily as I procrastinate doing my work; the light "popcorn" reading I'm doing is intellectually engaging, on some level, but it's also further fueling my atrophying attention span. And I'm almost exclusively getting surface-level, easily shared ideas that lack nuance.
Actually sitting down and focusing on a text, even if it's a pulp fiction story, works the brain in different ways, requiring sustained attention and deeper comprehension on whatever topic we're reading about (or more involved stories).
So, yes. You're right. Many still are reading a lot. But not reading books is still a huge problem for our society.
And I'm glad that I do both; reading is my primary source of entertainment, professional development, and personal growth. I just hope I'm successful in raising both my kiddos to be readers. (1 of 2, so far, but the youngest is only 6...)
And I think it's time to get off Lemmy and get back to my book.
Also reading long form texts is relatively boring endevour. The proliferation of short form text, audio, video and images athropies our ability to endure the state of boredom.
In my belief, boredom is really important for human beings as it enables us to spring us to action and bring more emotional awareness.
Yeah, I've almost completely fallen off narrative reading, but I spend most of every day looking at text. And I've typed 25,000 words in a week, just expanding on an idea in private notes, even though I still despise writing things out on paper. I do not suffer any lack of time spent in my own head.
I used to read more, but then video games became capable of telling captivating stories and writers and artists could share their ideas and visions directly with people in a way never possible before, and often more intimately and thoroughly than before. I'm not after the experience of reading a book, I'm after the experience of experiencing other peoples' perspectives, feelings, experiences and art. And there are mediums other than written word that do that for me. In the past, there simply wasn't enough content for other mediums to take the place of reading completely for those things.
Very cogent. Thank you for voicing this.
4. Educators being encouraged to teach to the test, rather than teach critical engagement with texts in their entirety.
Emphasis mine. IMO this has got to be a huge part of the equation, at least from my anecdotal experience. It was always nice when the instructor would get extra passionate and go "off script" to impress upon us some concept that they felt was especially important - even though we weren't being framed on it.
Just because people aren't reading books doesn't mean they aren't reading. I'm sure some people are just watching video content like TikTok or Youtube etc, but they'd have just been watching TV anyway.
People are reading, just not books so much.
What do you count as reading outside of books?
Well everybody fucking hates the TikTok voice, but like 90% of those videos have subtitles and you can just mute the fucking thing and read what its saying.
Lots of "watching videos" is actually "reading videos" these days. Especially with technical How-To videos, which often require you to read what's on the screen as well. If my How-To video is about coding, reading the code on the screen is pretty damn important.
I'm constantly watching internet videos completely muted while reading the text subtitles.