The reading of books is on the
decline World wide, despite Harry Potter and the best efforts of other Novelists
According to a survey of 2,000 British children and parents conducted by Nielsen
Book in June this year, 50% of family households now own at least one tablet, up
from 24% a year ago.
Is this a good thing for kids' reading habits? Are they hoovering up e-books and
delighting in digital book-apps on these devices? In a word: no. At least not
according to data shared at The Bookseller Children's Conference by research
firm Nielsen Book.
The good news? 32% of children still read books for pleasure on a daily basis,
the second most popular activity behind watching TV (36%), and well ahead of
social networking (20%), watching videos on YouTube (17%) and playing mobile
games and apps (16%).
On a weekly basis, 60% of children are reading books for pleasure, and if you
factor in children who are being read to by parents, that percentage climbs to
72%. But…
"But there's a really disturbing pattern beginning to emerge when you look on a
weekly basis," said Nielsen Book's Jo Henry, presenting the findings to an
audience of publishers.
Only three activities increased in percentage terms between 2012 and 2013:
playing "game apps" (the term used by Nielsen Book), visiting YouTube and text
messaging. Reading? That was down nearly eight percentage points.
"It's a snapshot, not a sustainable trend and next year it might go up again.
But this is alarming: children are being less engaged with reading," said Henry,
who also pointed to industry figures showing an 8% year-on-year drop in
(printed) books bought for children.
"What we're seeing is that non-readers have risen from 22% to 28% of all
children," said Henry, who went on to claim that it's not just reading that is
suffering from the growth in apps and YouTube use: activities including going
out, hobbies and art are also being dropped.
"It's hugely impacting on teenagers: 11-17 year-olds are actually dropping their
participation in quite a broad range of activities in order to play game apps,"
said Henry.
Nielsen's data shows that among 11-17 year-olds, non-readers grew from 13% to
27% between 2012 and 2013, while occasional readers fell from 45% to 38%; light
dropped from 4% to 2%; medium readers fell from 23% to 17%; and heavy readers
grew from 15% to 16%.
Nielsen has also asked children whether they'd like to read digitally. In 2012,
21% said they were doing it already, while 38% said they'd like to. In 2013,
those respective percentages were 33% and 28%.
Another report released Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts says the
number of non-reading adults increased by more than 17 million between 1992 and
2002.
Only 47 percent of adults read "literature" (poems, plays, narrative fiction) in
2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. Those reading any book at all in
2002 fell to 57 percent, down from 61 percent.
NEA chairman Dana Gioia, himself a poet, called the findings shocking and a
reason for grave concern.
"We have a lot of functionally literate people who are no longer engaged
readers," Gioia said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This isn't a
case of 'Johnny Can't Read,' but 'Johnny Won't Read.'"
The likely culprits, according to the report: television, movies and the
Internet.
"I think what we're seeing is an enormous cultural shift from print media to
electronic media, and the unintended consequences of that shift," Gioia said.
The decline came despite the creation of Oprah's book club in 1996 and the Harry
Potter craze that began in the late 1990s among kids and adults alike. Reading
fell even as Barnes & Noble boasted that its superstore empire was expanding the
book market.
In 1992, 72.6 million adults in the United States did not read a book. By 2002,
that figure had increased to 89.9 million, the NEA said.
In May, the nonprofit Book Industry Study Group reported that the number of
books purchased in the United States in 2003 fell by 23 million from the year
before to 2.22 billion.
The NEA study, titled "Reading at Risk," was based on a Census Bureau survey of
more than 17,000 adults.
The drop in reading was widespread: among men and women, young and old, black
and white, college graduates and high school dropouts. The numbers were
especially poor among adult men, of whom only 38 percent read literature, and
Hispanics overall, for whom the percentage was 26.5.
The decline was especially great among the youngest people surveyed, ages 18 to
24. Only 43 percent had read any literature in 2002, down from 53 percent in
1992.
Gioia said the electronic media that are contributing to the problem do offer
possible remedies. He praised Winfrey's use of television to promote literacy
and said he wished for a "thousand variants" of the idea.