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Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

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Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#331

Post by madaxe_again »

kuerbel wrote: post #250
madaxe_again wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a really effective inoculation against the Skinner box 20+ years ago, when I became addicted to an MMO. It took my life utterly turning to shit and barely escaping being kicked out of university for me to wake up. Since, I’ve always been aware of and wary of the possibility of this kind of dopamine cycling. I see it in others. My wife discovered YouTube shorts a year or so ago, and now she’ll lose entire days t…

20 years ago? Aahh, good old World of Warcraft is my guess. Played far too much far too long myself.

Anarchy Online of all bloody things.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#332

Post by encrypted_bird »

chickensong wrote: post #147
encrypted_bird wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, come on... I have ADHD and love reading. No need to use that as a bludgeon. It's unnecessary...

Apologies friend, neighbor comment has it right. Not trying to shade anyone with ADHD, just calling out as a widespread/modern challenge. Same with poor reading skills. Parents, schools, and culture have failed many people, who might otherwise have been avid readers, but instead they don't even know the joy of reading a good book.

Ah, no worries then. I apologize for misunderstanding. :)

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#333

Post by rglover »

TFNA wrote: post #101
garciasn wrote: post #40

I read for pleasure; ~100 books a year on average. When I go anywhere, I am reading. My daughter informed me that the mothers of her teammates were outright making fun of me for having my 'nose buried in a book,' before every event. I asked her if they were making fun of everyone else for having their nose buried in their phones; she laughed and said they probably were not. Why is reading for fun something that's wor…

> these days Bill Hicks, the standup comedian dead for over three decades already, had a now-classic bit about being challenged for reading by a waitress. Reading has always been uncool to some people.

Not what am I reading...but what am I reading for? Well, shit! You stumped me!

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#334

Post by juanani »

NickC25 wrote: post #314
drob518 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it’s a crisis. We’re raising kids that are illiterate and frankly just dumb. You ever watch those YouTube videos where they interview college kids (who were actually accepted to a college!) and they can’t correctly answer who fought in the US Civil War and other basic knowledge questions? They don’t know the difference between continents and countries (e.g. Europe and a country within Europe). They can’t tell yo…

Worse yet, these people can vote . And are completely susceptible to disinformation/misinformation campaigns.

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Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#335

Post by Schlagbohrer »

tartoran wrote: post #267
alt187 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sitting down and focusing part. For me, I've always been extremely inclined to audio processing, so I can sometimes just lay in bed or in a chair, or on the train, and... listen to an audio book. I really don't think it makes a big difference, at least for me. I used to be attached to the sensory experience of flicking pages, but there's also a big factor in letting the book (or, the narrator) take y…

I think reading develops internal monologue and you also can change the tempo according to understanding, slow down when a pasaage is hard etc. With audiobooks something that is not very clear escapes away as the audiobook moves on. Maybe multiple listenings can fill the gap but am not sure if re-listening to audiobooks is a thing.

Yes, well put, this happens to me too. I have to re-read tough or confusing passages, and I can slide quickly through simple parts. The forced pacing of an audiobook throws me off because of that.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#336

Post by _345 »

j4102_ wrote: post #326
kouteiheika wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. I feel like it got worse not because games became more sophisticated, but because they got dumber and require less and less brainpower. I spent my childhood playing ridiculous amount of video games, probably same amount or more as kids nowadays do. I had literally hundreds of Playstation games back in the day. And I turned out fine. But the difference was that…

Played Pokemon back in my day and even now I keep seeing how "dumbed" down it gets in some ways. The game has become more and more hand-held. Don't know if it's a trend across the entire industry though or if it's just me seeing it as an adult. I can't really say

Just you as an adult. It's always been that infantile

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#337

Post by chicken-stew »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #204
chicken-stew wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the result of reading, and the occasional jolt I get when reading, but not the activity of reading. I need to consume the text word for word, scanning with my eyes. The thing that gets me most happened after I got into Hemmingway: everything in a book happens in the forefront. In a movie you can have things happening outside your span od attention. Not in a book. You can’t have a doorbell happening in the back…

My apologies for over-commenting in this page but, uh, is there a way to read without reading the words? WTF does "I need to consume the text word for word, scanning with my eyes." mean? Are people reading with their eyes closed or using braille or listening to the paper or something?

I’m an outlier due to medical issues following a burnout to the crisp. I occasionally zone out, most often when I’m reading. So reading has become a chore - I can’t switch on an auto-pilot like I used to. This has made the activity literally “scanning with my eyes” and doing so with attention. On bad days I re-parse the same sentence several times and it just won’t get interpreted. I used to consume a lot of text and it got me two master degrees. Now I barely read and don’t remember what I read. Reading something online is by scrolling the text to the top bar, like pointing a finger to the line you’re reading.

Hope this answers your wtf

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#338

Post by tim-projects »

Back in 2005 I spent 2 years where I'd walk for an hour each day to the city centre. There I'd go to the book store. I read so many books, from every different section.

Eventually, I started to notice that nearly all the books seemed to essentially be repeating every other book. I stopped reading.

Today I get occasionally read books, but honestly I feel like 95% of book material is just filler.

I get far more from reading websites like this one.

I challenge the notion that reading books is something that leads to smart and well educated people. I just don't think that's true.

What I think it is that leads to that, is curiosity.

Phones take curiosity and run it into overdrive and born out. That's the issue with them for me at least.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#339

Post by aerhardt »

watwut wrote: post #58
aerhardt wrote: post #45

They should ask the Ministry of Culture here in Spain, who claims that reading is on the up and up among 14-24 year olds [1]. Nothing points to that in our abysmal PISA reading results, general educational attainment and outcomes, or anecdotal observation, but hey! At least it might be worth asking them about the surveying methodology. [1] https://www.cultura.gob.es/ca/actualidad/2026/01/260122-baro...

PISA does not measure reading for pleasure, it measures reading for factual information. There are questions about reading graphs, figuring out information only indirectly mentioned, that sort of thing. It does not care whether you get emotionally invested in this or that character or story. Reading for pleasure is only loosely related to that.

It tests general reading comprehension. Is it possible that a generation with abysmal reading comprehension and attention copiously reads for pleasure? Yes, but I’m very doubtful.

Re: Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

#340

Post by MagicMoonlight »

jdw64 wrote: post #261
rimliu wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do books equal sterile environment?

It is not that books are a sterile environment. Rather, I think the very attempt to isolate someone in an internet environment is itself a kind of sterile environment. To be honest, I think it is now difficult to get all information from books alone. I like reading too, but reading ultimately has a point where it becomes fixed at a particular moment. Do books from the 2010s align with theories from the 2020s? I don't…

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