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Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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I'm always interested to see exactly what is included and excluded from their definition of reading. On average, most adults actually read more today that we did in the 90s, if you're purely talking words of text consumed. Are graphic novels being included in these stats? Short stories? Social media threads? Most people even watch videos/tv/movies with subtitles they read now, which was not something that was an option before.
The actual article text never says the word "book" once, but I strongly suspect that is all that's being counted.
As a teacher in lower secondary school, kids don't do any of that. They read physical media sporadically, and the main kind of digital media they consume is through IG and TikTok, furtherly filtered by the algorithm to appeal to their interest. The only kind of excitement I see in their eyes when talking reading is when talking manga, but even then it's mostly because they got there through anime (dubbed, so not even with subs) first. Kids don't read half as often as we did twenty years ago, and teachers get the blame for trying to push some sense in them through lecture.
Not a kid anymore, but I'm guilty as charged when it comes to manga. It's the only thing I'll read now aside from random stuff on the web