According to recent surveys, youth are reading fewer printed books, especially long novels. How can it affect the mindset of the younger generation?

How Book Reading Influences the Youth

Diderot once said: “People stop thinking when they stop reading.” Reading is a way to expand horizons, develop intellectual abilities, promote deep thinking, and develop imagination.

Books serve as an intermediary in communication and provide us with basic skills for learning and living. They form a creative and visual way of thinking, and they have a beneficial effect on personal development.

Neglecting reading can cause even A-students to be unable to retell a story, formulate their thoughts vaguely, and be incapable of character analysis. And conversely, students with a passion for reading can write a sophisticated essay even in APA format  (https://www.bestcustomwriting.com/write-my-paper-using-apa-style/).

A Decline in Reading Books among Young People Spells Trouble

People reading less or not reading at all has grown into a major problem in recent years. Unfortunately, the sentence “I don’t read because I’m busy” is becoming a popular excuse for many people today. Experts studying how literature affects our lives claim that the main reasons for young people’s reluctance to read are the fast pace of life and clip thinking.

Movies and social networks have become more relevant than books today. Taking the path of least resistance, young people prefer watching movies to reading books. Aggravating the situation, an upsurge in the number of mass media outlets in recent years has increased the angle of decline in reading.

The number of ways in which people can obtain information is constantly growing. Young people tend to use the Internet increasingly because they can find data there much faster and easier than in books. Any info is publicly available seven days a week. To learn something, people do not even need to leave their homes. The number of available resources gives a person the freedom of choice. However, the problem is the variety and a tremendous amount of information. Under such conditions, people face a difficult task of sifting through piles of data d before finding what they need.

An impact of books on society can hardly be overestimated. Along with traditional books and periodicals, screen media are beginning to play a more important role in our lives.

At present, young people are paying more attention to well-known film versions of literary works.  “I want to read something easier and more entertaining,” they say and choose magazines or comic books.

Television and computer games are gradually replacing books. People read novels significantly less than before. In this regard, we can list several repercussions:

• The symbolic status of reading books and its prestige are diminishing
• The perception of printed texts becomes superficial and fragmentary
• Illustrated magazines and comic books are becoming a preferred choice

Is The Situation That Bad?

Today, young people prefer to get information via electronic media and the Internet, which is actually not as bad as many researchers think. Since they like to spend time with gadgets, e-books are now more in demand than their printed counterparts. Classic novels are digitized, and youth read them quite willingly.

E-versions of magazines ( for example, PC World) have also been getting attention. Also, many libraries hold presentations dedicated to authors of the books which were made into movies.

Most young people are familiar with classic novels thanks to movies. However, films are no substitute for books and vice versa. A movie based on a literary work differs from it in many ways. But, after watching a successful book-to-film adaptation, young people often want to read the original book and compare it with the film. Some of them even make it their hobby to look for differences between books and the film versions.

To sum it up, today’s youth read not only what’s necessary but also what is interesting to them. Nowadays, young people are reading a bit more than they did ten years ago, but the situation is slowly changing.

According to recent studies, girls still like reading books full of experiences and sensations, whereas boys prefer periodicals and short stories. A lot depends on the subject and quality of texts. The way information is presented certainly changes with time, but the fact that books will accompany young people is undeniable.