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Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#61

Post by orwin »

jonhohle wrote: post #46

My wife instilled a strong love of reading in all of our children from a young age. They all ask to go to the library, but my oldest became the most voracious reader. If we didn’t limit screen time, he probably wouldn’t sleep, but with unlimited time with books, he’ll easily finish a novel in a day, and sometimes two. My parents and me are terrible readers, to the point where I thought I might have mild dyslexia. Onc…

The best memories I have as a child are 'inappropriate' books (especially 'when I was five I killed myself' at ~12yo and 1984 at ~14.). I always had issues (disliked being touched, difficulties to empathize), but those books emotionally shook me, moved me so much, so hard I like to think I became a better version of me after reading them.

Started doing theater at 12 after Buten, started working as after school counselor for 6 to 8 yo kids and help them do their homework after reading 1984, ultimately becoming a youth camp counsellor at 17. Which were terribly outside my comfort zone, but Buten showed me how to improve myself, and Orwell how to improve the world (or at least try my best).

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#62

Post by jonhohle »

vonnik wrote: post #43

To be clear this trend starts really early, at least in grade school. I have a second grader and most of his friends have had iPads for years, play video games for hours per day at home. Those kids don’t like to read, and/or are reading slow. Their parents wonder why, and blame the school. You have to make books the most exciting thing in the house for most of the day. And you have to model the behavior of reading; i…

Reading with kids before bed was our wind down activity. I attribute that and limiting screens to an hour most days to their interest in reading.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#63

Post by bluGill »

hackyhacky wrote: post #56
bluGill wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose was to make a statement about communism which in turn means it was intended to be the last.

> which in turn means it was intended to be the last. That's a bold and misguided assertion of authorial intent. Since you're a fan of the scientific method: you can please cite sources in support of your claim?

Read all the other replies. In particular foldr (sibling to yours) is a very good analysis that makes my point while looking like a rebuttal.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#64

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

vonnik wrote: post #43

To be clear this trend starts really early, at least in grade school. I have a second grader and most of his friends have had iPads for years, play video games for hours per day at home. Those kids don’t like to read, and/or are reading slow. Their parents wonder why, and blame the school. You have to make books the most exciting thing in the house for most of the day. And you have to model the behavior of reading; i…

> make sure they see you reading for your own pleasure.

Monkey see, monkey do!

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#65

Post by hackyhacky »

bluGill wrote: post #63
hackyhacky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which in turn means it was intended to be the last. That's a bold and misguided assertion of authorial intent. Since you're a fan of the scientific method: you can please cite sources in support of your claim?

Read all the other replies. In particular foldr (sibling to yours) is a very good analysis that makes my point while looking like a rebuttal.

I read it. It's definitely a rebuttal.

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#67

Post by stonogo »

hackyhacky wrote: post #21
stonogo wrote: post #16

Same category error as always. "Screen time" is meaningless noise. They could be spending eight hours a day in the Kindle app reading classics. A good-faith study would evaluate what the kids are doing, not the tools they're using to do it.

> They could be spending eight hours a day in the Kindle app reading classics Have you been around kids recently? I think we all know what they're doing on the phone, and it's not The Great Gatsby .

Wouldn't it be neat if anyone actually checked?

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#68

Post by unsupp0rted »

sph wrote: post #60
unsupp0rted wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation. Everything that was considered fancy and high-culture when I was in my formative years is fancy and high-culture now and everything after that is slop and mind-rot. But it makes no difference: the older generations die and the newer ones take over either way, and what's acceptable or even high culture changes.

> It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation. So this means that we have decided a priori that life can only improve in all aspects? That’s evidently absurd. This is called a thought-terminating cliché. It’s as intellectually nuanced as putting your fingers in your ears and singing “la la I’m right”. It’s often used not because it is true, but because to prove oth…

It's not really a thought-terminating cliche.

Concrete issues (e.g. iPads in the classroom result in worse tested recall) retain plenty of space.

It's the vague repetitive "man yells at cloud" gripes that get auto-terminated, e.g. "is our children learning?"

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#69

Post by [deleted] »

vonnik wrote: post #43

To be clear this trend starts really early, at least in grade school. I have a second grader and most of his friends have had iPads for years, play video games for hours per day at home. Those kids don’t like to read, and/or are reading slow. Their parents wonder why, and blame the school. You have to make books the most exciting thing in the house for most of the day. And you have to model the behavior of reading; i…

[deleted]

Re: Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

#70

Post by jonhohle »

orwin wrote: post #61
jonhohle wrote: post #46

My wife instilled a strong love of reading in all of our children from a young age. They all ask to go to the library, but my oldest became the most voracious reader. If we didn’t limit screen time, he probably wouldn’t sleep, but with unlimited time with books, he’ll easily finish a novel in a day, and sometimes two. My parents and me are terrible readers, to the point where I thought I might have mild dyslexia. Onc…

The best memories I have as a child are 'inappropriate' books (especially 'when I was five I killed myself' at ~12yo and 1984 at ~14.). I always had issues (disliked being touched, difficulties to empathize), but those books emotionally shook me, moved me so much, so hard I like to think I became a better version of me after reading them. Started doing theater at 12 after Buten, started working as after school counse…

I personally wouldn’t choose 1984 for a 14 year old, but would consider it rather tame compared to modern fiction. Some of it would make the grocery store check out isle romance novels blush but also don’t contain any profound message.
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