From The American Psychological Association:
If you can’t remember the last time you saw a teenager reading a book, newspaper or magazine, you’re not alone. In recent years, less than 20 percent of U.S. teens report reading a book, magazine or newspaper daily for pleasure, while more than 80 percent say they use social media every day, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Compared with previous generations, teens in the 2010s spent more time online and less time with traditional media, such as books, magazines and television,” said lead author Jean M. Twenge, PhD, author of the book iGen and professor of psychology at San Diego State University. “Time on digital media has displaced time once spent enjoying a book or watching TV.”
The research was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture®.
. . . .
“Think about how difficult it must be to read even five pages of an 800-page college textbook,” Twenge says, “when you’ve been used to spending most of your time switching between one digital activity and another in a matter of seconds. It really highlights the challenges students and faculty both face in the current era.”
In the article, Twenge says that she and her fellow researchers were surprised to see how dramatic a decline in reading their study revealed. “It’s so convenient to read books and magazines on electronic devices like tablets,” she says. “There’s no more going to the mailbox or the bookstore—you just download the magazine issue or book and start reading. Yet reading has still declined precipitously.”
And in a telling comment, she points out that “Blockbuster and VCRs didn’t kill going to the movies—but streaming videos apparently did.”
. . . .
Use of digital media increased substantially from 2006 to 2016. Among 12th-graders, internet use during leisure time doubled from one to two hours per day during that period. It also increased 75 percent for 10th graders and 68 percent for eighth-graders. Usage rates and increases were fairly uniform across gender, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, according to Twenge.
“In the mid-2010s, the average American 12th-grader reported spending approximately two hours a day texting, just over two hours a day on the internet — which included gaming — and just under two hours a day on social media,” said Twenge. “That’s a total of about six hours per day on just three digital media activities during their leisure time.”
In comparison, 10th-graders reported a total of five hours per day and eighth-graders reported four hours per day on those three digital activities. And all that time in the digital world is seriously degrading the time they spend on more traditional media, according to Twenge.
The decline in reading print media was especially steep. In the early 1990s, 33 percent of 10th-graders said they read a newspaper almost every day. By 2016, that number was only 2 percent. In the late 1970s, 60 percent of 12th-graders said they read a book or magazine almost every day; by 2016, only 16 percent did. Twelfth-graders also reported reading two fewer books each year in 2016 compared with 1976, and approximately one-third did not read a book (including e-books) for pleasure in the year prior to the 2016 survey, nearly triple the number reported in the 1970s.
. . . .
“There’s no lack of intelligence among young people,” Twenge now says in the APA article, “but they do have less experience focusing for longer periods of time and reading long-form text.
“Being able to read long-form text is crucial for understanding complex issues and developing critical thinking skills.”
Link to the rest at The American Psychological Association
Not sure why they lumped magazines and books together. Magazines are just paper versions of websites, basically. Short bursts of usually non-fictional content accompanied by pictures and ads. Pretending that a magazine is in any way more intellectual or cultured than a book is ridiculous. (FWIW, I haven’t read a magazine in probably well over a decade, aside from maybe one newsletter from an organization I belong to or something.) I honestly don’t know how most magazines stay in business these days.
I blame the parents. My teens read every day. If they want any electronic time they have to. Of course, after a while they started reading for fun.
I think they’re kidding themselves if they think more than a small percentage of teens from any generation devoted much of their free time to reading. I never met anyone who read as much as I did until I met my future-husband at age 19. And to this day I’ve never met anyone else who reads as much as I do.
When I was in school in the 60s and 70s (esp jr and sr high), we eagerly passed around copies of novels. It might take a few weeks to get around to most, but we shared books and talked about them. My two elder sisters read, not as much as me, but quite a bit.
I figure the equivalent of magazines is the internet now: articles, fashion and celebrity news, recipes, how-tos. We go to the web for this stuff we got from Vanidades, Vogue, Newsweek, Time, Good Housekeeping, Popular Science, etc.
I do not see the new generation in my family reading, passing books, or talking books the way we did when I was a teen. They have iPads and smartphones and play games and go to sites and talk about Netflix shows….but unless it’s a phenomenon (like Harry Potter or Rick Riordan), they just don’t talk books and I don’t see them reading. I do see them playing video games a lot when I visit or streaming video content.
We had very few TV stations in my elem-high school years. I don’t recall seeing cable tv until I was over 20, and that was limited, too. Now, it’s a lot of stations, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Youtube.
I used to read a book a day, sometimes more.
Now, I read a lot, lot, lot less.
I used to spend $4-5,000 on books a year. Now, it’s less than $750.
I spend a lot of time reading on the web and streaming, too. It’s just that I still have a reading habit, but I do see it eroding in both myself and my husband given the temptations out there.
“Teens Today Spend More Time on Digital Media, Less Time Reading”
From a source that doesn’t notice any digital media being read because it goes against the message they were paid to produce …
“Being able to read long-form text is crucial for understanding complex issues and developing critical thinking skills.”
Being able to [look beyond the media] is crucial for understanding complex issues and developing critical thinking skills [which is another thing this study lacks].