Young people read less nowadays

    Or at least according to a quick Google search...


    Even though, "booktok" seems popular and in bookstores, you would see shelves titled "booktok books" or something similar.

    But a lot of those popular books seem to be dirty romance novels.


    I know that before booktok, there was also "booktube". (I didn't get into "booktube" until I went to college)



    And as a librarian, I do notice that children and teens do read books or at least rent them.

    Even though they are renting because of school reasons.


    When I was younger, I do also remember that me and my classmates had to go to the library and rent a book.

    I think I did enjoy reading back then or at least I liked some of the books, I read. Even though when I became a teenager, I wasn't that interested in YA books, because I found a lot of them to be too "dirty" (but some children's books also were kinda dirty, especially the Danish ones.)


    And of course, in schools, children read. It is literally the place where most people learn how to read.

    In language class, the teacher makes pupils read stuff that they have to read.

    In schools they don't just read, they of course also have to analyze what the just read. Where it might be like "What is the short story about?" and "What genre is it?". I do think that it is a good thing to think about "what did we just read today?". But there have been times when I have had hard times analyzing stuff.

    Some of the stuff that I had read for school felt kinda "dirty".


    I have heard that schools can make reading books sound more boring or something.

    I feel like schools can make a lot of stuff seem boring. When I was a teenager, geography sounded boring.



    I don't think I was that much like that as a child.

    I do remember reading picture books when I was a child.

    And every night, I read some children's books.



    Most of you know that I write fanfics and stuff. When I was 12 years old or something, I once was like "I want to become an author when I grow up". But I can't remember why exactly that I wanted to become an author, despite the fact that I was a bit of a storyteller when I was a child.

    And I also wanted to become a librarian (but for a silly reason, which was "so that I can see the books I've written in my library")

    Despite me having those dreams, I feel like that when I was a teen, I probably wrote more than I read.

    And I have felt like "if I want to write books, I also have to read books".



    Nowadays, I do read books and am a bit of a literature nerd.

    Even though I think I spend more time in front of my computer and stuff than I spend time reading books. (there are times when I don't feel like reading much)

    And I think when I was younger, I probably spent more time in front of TV and computer than I spent reading books.




    Okay, this thread ended up being an essay.

    And I also rambled a bit.

    :meme-i-aint-reading-all-that:

    I somewhat agree with you, but I still have hope that reading will prevail.


    I think that kids are more inclined to read than teens. The way some schools approach mandatory reading or looking at some of the books that teens have to read for school, I think they can easily get discouraged, and if reading wasn't something that was done in their homes and by their parents, they might never like it. Kids in my extended family like to read, because their parents and other family members are also readers and we always gift them books. While they tell me that some of their classmates spend all their time on their phones. So a lot depends on your upbringing and environment.


    But I still have faith that kids and teens will continue reading.


    Booktok seems to popularise reading these days, but it has a lot of downsides (for example, I've seen videos of young people complaining that a book has long paragraphs and not enough dialogue or saying that they skip long parts of books and it's normal for them). Also, teens reading inappropriate books is a whole other topic and it's so bad also in my country.


    I like going to book festivals close to me and ever since tiktok got popular, I've been seeing girls as young as 10-12 buying books that ar clearly 18+ (mostly dark romance, which got really popular here recently) and the salesman don't even bat an eyelash. The parents don't care and the kids want to do what's popular, so they end up reading books that really are not good for them, and may cause them a lot of harm :/



    Also, hi fellow book nerd 😊

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    SNSD ★ TWICE ★ IVE ★ Taeyeon ★ aespa ★ f(x) ★ Red Velvet

    Insightful 1

    Sorry I ended my post so abruptly, it's a bit late and I'm tired.


    Basically, I wanted to say I agree with you that young people read less but it seems that with booktok being so popular, they slowly start to read more. I saw someone online say that "reading is becoming popular again". The only problem is that some of the books are really not appropriate for them.


    I'm hoping that will change in the future and that books for 18+ readers will be clearly marked. And maybe parents will start to care, because the publishers don't care at all, as long as they get the money.

    Twice-The-Best-Thing-I-Ever-Did.png

    SNSD ★ TWICE ★ IVE ★ Taeyeon ★ aespa ★ f(x) ★ Red Velvet

    Quote from Pridge42

    Nowadays, there are quite a few alternative methods of obtaining information. i think that it is not necessary to read books in the classical version if the level of education and quality of life does not suffer from this.

    Counterpoint: reading is not always a means to an end. while reading is associated with obtaining knowledge, reading itself is a valuable skill and a necessary action within a work environment. may not be gripping fiction, but its necessary on its own.

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