Articles vs Books: In Honour of Read a Book Day
Everyone likes a good book. Trust me, even those darn Millennials and their internet. Millennials, and young people in general get a bad rap from older generations, and I (Erik) don’t think it’s all warranted. Every generation was put in the spotlight for being different when they were young, however with the world changing invention, the internet, and the rapid technological and cultural development these days, it’s easy to see why baby boomers would feel very out of touch with the next gen. The topic of book reading definitely gets brought up. Personally, I have been told I don’t read enough and that I spend too much time on my phone which might honestly be true but as a generation 15-24 year olds spend on average 18 more minutes per day reading than 25-64-year olds.
Despite much buzz when released, tablets and e-books have plateaued sales at around 20%. As far as full novels, millennials use them about as much as other generations, but reading articles, news, or anything else on the computer is a much younger person thing. This does have an impact your brain, for example it has been shown that reading on a screen can deplete your mental resources much more than in print, making it harder to remember things, and you know that headache behind your eyes you get after working 5+ hours late into the night? That’s because of the blue light emitted from your screens is something which prevents the body from making melatonin and getting tired. Millennials still prefer reading print than online when given the option – 98% of college students when asked said so, and overall, in America 72% of people read a print book rather than online or in audio book format.
Millennials are anything but uninformed, in fact 69% say that they get news at least once a day, and 85% say that keeping up with current events is important to them. However, the way they get news is very different. For one thing, the prevalence of social media has allowed news organizations to reach people in different ways. Whereas older people would always (and be forced to) seek out news, 15-24-year olds are most likely to have news come to them. There is evidence young people get more news than previous generations, presently the average person gets 72 minutes of news a day, 12 minutes higher than 2006, a increase done mostly by people under 35. Although there is much more fake news circulating, the fact that news can come from many different sources allows people to see many opinions, and if a particular story catches one’s interest, then more research can easily be done by surfing the web. I think that particularly the way young people get news these days is building an extremely socially conscious and unbiased generation, one that is not afraid of sharing or questioning their opinion, or that of someone else.
It’s important to remember how fast the world is changing, and it takes a changing perspective to live in this modern world. Reading itself is not changing, the way people read is changing and that’s not something we should be afraid of. Online reading isn’t even the craziest example of this. Ever heard of Hooked? Hooked is an short thriller novel app that uses text messages as the medium! I think its super exciting seeing new art forms being born, just like how photoshop and online images changed visual art! A trial is free on the app store and google play store, go check it out! Here’s Erik signing off on this opinion piece, if you have any comments about this week’s blog, or suggestions for future ones, feel free to leave a message in the comment section