Summary
A National Literacy Trust (NLT) survey reveals that children’s enjoyment of reading is at its lowest in 19 years, with only 34.6% of eight- to 18-year-olds saying they enjoy reading in their free time.
This marks an 8.8 percentage point drop from last year, part of a declining trend since 2016.
Reading frequency has also hit a historic low, and a significant gender gap persists, with only 28.2% of boys versus 40.5% of girls enjoying reading.
The NLT calls for a government taskforce to address these declines, warning that “the futures of a generation are being put at risk.”
The reason is simple, in the time of motion picture, videogames, and music, why would somebody decide to stare at bland black text on white paper for 3 hours a day?
Reading is by far the least approachable, most time consuming and least rewarding for of self entertainment. Books where the most popular because their distribution was the easiest and the cheapest. Now distribution of digital media including movies, music and videogames has become trivial.
Books are also the easiest to create (in relative terms), meaning for every GOOD book there are 1000s of really bad ones, and it’s not readily apparent which one is which. Where as for every really good movie there are many only 10 mediocre ones.
What the article describes as “better mental health” regarding to children reading, is usually a product of the abstraction that book inherently posses. Since all you can go off when reading a novel is your own imagination and maybe some official artwork, books have the least reinforcement of social standards.
Text is a very reliable way to relais information, but when it comes to telling a story, the more senses you can captivate the more alive a story will feel. Books don’t appeal to your eyes and ears but movies do.