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Teens Don’t Read Books!
Posted by Girls By Design
May 27, 2009
Categories:  Newsletter
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I think you will not be surprised to find that this generation lacks in reading. Ask a bunch of people at your school and you’re most likely to find a very small quantity of students who enjoy reading and do so often. There are many factors to explore here because people may have the interest and have absolutely no time for reading seeing as many of us live such fast paced lives or it could be the complete opposite where the person really doesn’t care much for reading anything at all and would rather sit in front of the TV screen flipping through the channels. What could it be? Is there really an answer to this?

Skimming through statistics from 10 years ago I found a chart that claimed 92% of teen girls read but seeing as that was back then…why don’t I skip to more recently with the statistics from 2007? Now, I may not be referring to girls alone on this one, but speaking for all teenagers in general – nearly half of Americans from 18 to 24 years of age read no books for pleasure at all! That’s not it…teens from the ages 15 to 24 spend only 7-10 minutes per day on voluntary reading. (60% less than the average American). Now I don’t know about you but it really shocked me to see these statistics speaking in a nationwide level, this made me think “Hey, maybe it’s just here that kids have no interest in reading…but all over the nation?! Are you kidding me?”

I know that you’re not necessarily an addition to these tragic results but still, I can’t say I blame teens because sometimes it’s simply the issue of time we have to consider. From the percentage I mentioned that nearly all girls would read (yup, the one from ‘99), one of the sub-categories was asking girls if they loved reading but rarely had any time for it and you know what the percentage for this one was? 49%!! And that was in 1999! Imagine now! (Again…couldn’t find the results, but just imagine how that number must’ve increased by now).

I find we really have our fast-paced world to blame for this one. Through school we get to read books, but when it’s time to read for pleasure, we find there is no time at all. I know of many girls who are involved in extra-curricular activities, helping around the house, playing sports, and have lives. How can we juggle reading into our schedules when we can’t fit anything else in there?

Have you seen those campaigns that encourage-or at least try to- reading? In many cases when we enter the amazing world of Borders, incredible bookstores, or libraries we feel this encouragement to read everything we find! But then we remember that we have a school paper to turn in tomorrow “Ugh!” And then scholars and statistic-dudes are all left wondering “Why are people not reading?” They should really encourage slow-paced lives shouldn’t they?

And after all my blabbing I’ll leave you with something to think about because even though I blame this fast-paced world for my reading troubles, I just realized that maybe we just procrastinate too much like I’m doing at this very moment. So who would you like to blame for this one: time, lack of interest, or procrastination?

by Jenipher

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Kailin

June 3, 2009

As a writer of teen and young adult books, I find that there are still a lot of readers out there, but it depends on what they find interesting. For instance, no matter how busy I am (I’m not a teen, but I’m kept pretty busy by a fast-paced crazy schedule, too), I do find time for the classics – Jane Austen, the Brontes sisters, etc.

I find that there is an audience of teen girl readers out there, and I’m so incredibly blessed and lucky to have met some of them at book signings and got to hear what they want. They mean the world to me, and I write books that they can relate to, or at least I try :)

@Jenipher – great article! It’s very interesting :) :)


G

June 3, 2009

I think it’s a combination of all three. School leaves very little time for ten months and what time is left after homework, after-school activities and classes generally goes to work, or ‘relaxing’. Lack of interest probably stems from the types of literature we’re exposed to in school. A lot of teens aren’t too fond of those and it probably dampers their interest in reading. Lastly, we have the best and worst thing in the world: Procrastination. It just happens haha. So yeah, I believe that it’s a combination of the things you mentioned;Such a shame. I think it’s great that you shed some light on this, no one really notices *shakes head*


Laurenelle

June 3, 2009

For me, and as far as I can tell for others, time is the biggest factor in why we don’t read books as often. Sure, we “read” online a lot, but does that provide the same benefits as does reading books? The theme of my freshman English class last quarter was literacy in the digital age. We read an interesting article from Atlantic Magazine by Nicholas Carr called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The article discusses how we may have become a more impatient culture as a whole and how our hyperspeed existences may be detrimental.
Personally, I read a huge amount of literature for classes, and when I get a free ten minutes, I’d rather take a power nap, check facebook, read the news, or post on GBD than read a book which I probably won’t pick up again for several days and by that time will have forgotten what happened and will need to reread. I think the decline in reading may be attributed to the way we live in general – busy, harried, and attached to technology.


Kendra

June 5, 2009

I lovvvvveeeeees to READ…..but I have to agree it can be hard to make the time….BUT then again in saying that…once you start a really good book you cant put it down and then all of a sudden time is ALL you have!

Maybe it depends on what you choice to do with your time.

Speaking of books anyone have any good suggestions of a new book for me?

xo
K


Ninz

June 10, 2009

I love to read! I always did! And in my early years my parents needed to read out to as often as possible! Books are a great way to flee in a whole new world or go on adventures!
But I also recognized the trend that teens and especially kids don’t read anymore. I work two days a week in a school to help deprived kids with their homework. Sometimes when they’ve done all their work – I want to read with them or to talk with them about books, because it’s so important not only for your reading and writing skills! But my kids really hate it. They prefer playing video games or watching TV! Books seem to be evil to them and this is a really sad development. But they don’t have any connection to reading… their parents don’t read out to them. How sad!

@Kendra: What kind of books do you like to read?


Ninz

June 10, 2009

@Kailin: You write books? How great! What are the titles? I’d love to read it! Especially because I’m trying to finish my first manuscript these weeks… ;) Maybe you could tell me how your way from writing to publishing went? I would feel flattered!


Kathy

June 20, 2009

I haven’t read a real book in, like, years. Oh no wait…that’s not true. I did read “Lush Life” over my vacation back in March. Good read if you’re curious about what police work is really like. I picked it up from the airport because the story took place in the Lower East Side/East Village, which is where I hang out a lot.

But before that, I hadn’t read a book in a long time. So sad. I just keep coming across books I’d like to read and add them to my list, but never get around to reading any of them. There’s almost a hundred on my list now. lol. I haven’t even read the last Harry Potter book yet. How tragic is that? For me, it comes down to time. Most of my reading now is devoted to the news, other RSS feeds, and journals/papers I need to keep up with for work.

I’m not surprised that so many teens today don’t read. The teens I know…they really don’t have time. It’s all they can do to keep up with schoolwork and all their extracurriculars. And then they need some sort of social life to maintain their sanity. So reading falls by the wayside. It’s too bad because I think one of the most valuable aspects of reading is that sort of solitary thinking it encourages, apart from all the noise you encounter in daily life.


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