Is reading dying or is it already dead?

Photo by Corey Blaz on Unsplash
The first graders held signs over their heads and chanted out loud to a cheering crowd of parents, teachers, and school board members, "We read 4,458 books!" The crowd went wild, applauding and cheering. The kids beamed. Their teacher closed with, "And remember kids, never stop reading!" The crowd cheered some more.

 Like Hamlet at his mother's wedding, I sat in the corner, a melancholy English teacher and couldn't stop myself from thinking, "But they will stop." According to a 2014 Common Sense Media report , 64% of seventeen-year-olds in 1984 said they read a book (for pleasure) at least once per week. In 2012 that number dropped to 40%--a 24% decrease.

 That means that in 2012, almost two-thirds of high school juniors or seniors did not pick up a book (eBook or print) even once a week. Plus, that's the first year that SnapChat came out and before it was big. Does anyone think that number has gone up in the last eight years?

 In that same report, between 1984 and 2012 the number of 13 year-olds that read a book at least once a week dropped from 70% to 53%--a 17% decrease. But for 9-year-olds, it was only a 5% drop from 81 to 76 percent.

So those first-graders, 8-9 yrs old, were still reading books for fun, but the rate drops rapidly as they approach teen years. Things aren't much better in the adult sphere. Pew Research did a 2016 poll where they found that 73% of Americans say they have read one book in the last 12 months.

 One book. I can't help looking at that number and wondering, what if they asked about a second book? What would the percentage be then?

 This drop in reading that happens somewhere between when kids read books every day for their first grade teacher and read almost not at all when they're seventeen is not new, but it is almost certainly more extreme. How could it not be with the many wondrous delights promised to us by our web-connected devices?

 I can't quiet the voice that keeps asking if it really matters that we read less now. I know it matters to me but does it really matter? Or am I just another aging, nostalgia-addled adult remembering things when they were better then and resisting the new, techno-fabulous way of living life? I hope it's not the latter, but I honestly don't know.

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