ELA Due 2:30 PM DL - Do Now Mulligan How much do you read: CLASS: CommonLit Teens reading less
Due 2:30 PM
DL - Do Now - 4/20/20
Mulligan 8:54 AM
How many minutes/hours do you spend reading each week? What can you do to increase that time spent reading?
Classwork
Classwork
Why it matters that teens are reading less
When
is the last time you read a book for pleasure? According to Jean
Twenge, a professor of psychology, digital media is changing teenagers’
reading habits. As you read, take notes on how a lack of reading impacts teenagers.
Teens
didn’t always spend that much time with digital media. Online time has
doubled since 2006 and social media use moved from a periodic activity
to a daily one. By 2016, nearly nine out of 10 12th-grade girls said
they visited social media sites every day
Most
of us spend much more time with digital media than we did a decade ago.
But today’s teens have come of age with smartphones in their pockets.
Compared to teens a couple of decades ago, the way they interact with
traditional media like books and movies is fundamentally different.
My
co-authors and I analyzed nationally representative surveys of over one
million U.S. teens collected since 1976 and discovered an almost
seismic
shift in how teens are spending their free time.
Increasingly, books seem to be gathering dust.
It’s all about the screens
By
2016, the average 12th grader said they spent a staggering six hours a
day texting, on social media, and online during their free time. And
that’s just three activities; if other digital media activities were
included, that estimate would surely rise.
Meanwhile,
time spent playing video games rose from under an hour a day to an hour
and a half on average. One out of 10 8th graders in 2016 spent 40 hours
a week or more gaming – the time commitment of a full-time job.
With only so much time in the day, doesn’t something have to give?
Maybe
not. Many scholars have insisted that time online does not displace
time spent engaging with traditional media. Some people are just more
interested in media and entertainment, they point out, so more of one
type of media doesn’t necessarily mean less of the other.
However, that doesn’t tell us much about what happens across a whole cohort
of people when time spent on digital media grows and grows. This is
what large surveys conducted over the course of many years can tell us.
Movies and books go by the wayside
While
70% of 8th and 10th graders once went to the movies once a month or
more, now only about half do. Going to the movies was equally popular
from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s, suggesting that Blockbuster video
and VCRs didn’t kill going to the movies.
But
after 2007 – when Netflix introduced its video streaming service –
moviegoing began to lose its appeal. More and more, watching a movie
became a solitary
experience. This fits a larger pattern: In another analysis, we found
that today’s teens go out with their friends considerably less than
previous generations did.
But
the trends in moviegoing pale in comparison to the largest change we
found: An enormous decline in reading. In 1980, 60% of 12th graders said
they read a book, newspaper or magazine every day that wasn’t assigned
for school.
By
2016, only 16% did – a huge drop, even though the book, newspaper or
magazine could be one read on a digital device (the survey question
doesn’t specify format).
The
number of 12th graders who said they had not read any books for
pleasure in the last year nearly tripled, landing at one out of three by
2016. For iGen – the generation born since 1995 who has spent their
entire adolescence with smartphones – books, newspapers and magazines
have less and less of a presence in their daily lives.
Of
course, teens are still reading. But they’re reading short texts and
Instagram captions, not longform articles that explore deep themes and
require critical thinking and reflection. Perhaps as a result, SAT
reading scores in 2016 were the lowest they have ever been since record
keeping began in 1972.
It doesn’t bode
well for their transition to college, either. Imagine going from
reading two-sentence captions to trying to read even five pages of an
800-page college textbook at one sitting. Reading and comprehending
longer books and chapters takes practice, and teens aren’t getting that
practice.
There
was a study from the Pew Research Center a few years ago finding that
young people actually read more books than older people. But that
included books for school and didn’t control for age. When we look at
pleasure reading across time, iGen is reading markedly less than
previous generations
The way forward
So should we wrest
smartphones from iGen’s hands and replace them with paper books?
Probably not: smartphones are teens’ main form of social communication.
However,
that doesn’t mean they need to be on them constantly. Data connecting
excessive digital media time to mental health issues suggests a limit of
two hours a day of free time spent with screens, a restriction that
will also allow time for other activities – like going to the movies
with friends or reading.
Of
the trends we found, the pronounced decline in reading is likely to
have the biggest negative impact. Reading books and longer articles is
one of the best ways to learn how to think critically, understand
complex issues and separate fact from fiction. It’s crucial for being an
informed voter, an involved citizen, a successful college student and a
productive employee.
If print starts to die, a lot will go with it.
Notes
1. of enormous proportion or effect
2. group of people
3. Solitary (adjective) : done or existing alone
4. Bode (verb) : to indicate a certain outcome
5. Wrest (verb) : to forcibly pull from someone’s grasp
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