How youngsters’ reading habits are evolving
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A few weeks ago, the 2021 edition of “What Kids Are Reading” was published. This is an annual report that draws from data on more than 7 million youngsters in the US — the largest such yearly study of reading among children from kindergarten to Grade 12. It allows educators, parents, policymakers and communicators to gauge the evolution of children’s reading habits and devise strategies to improve the trends. This year, the effect of the pandemic was an additional factor that observers wanted to analyze, in addition to the continuing tug of war between digital and print media, between fiction and non-fiction, etc.
In the Arab world, an “Arab Reading Index” was published in 2016 by the Dubai-based Arab Knowledge Project, based on an electronic survey that was conducted among more than 145,000 participants from all 22 Arab countries. However, to my knowledge, there has not been a more recent report.
As the report “What [US] Kids Are Reading” shows, there are new trends, as children’s habits are evolving. Briefly, the highlights are: Helped by digital reading solutions, children are reading more; while they still prefer to read fiction (easier and more fun), nonfiction material is attracting their attention and now makes up 43 percent of their reading; and comprehension has remained (perhaps surprisingly) high, only slightly better in fiction than nonfiction (whose content is generally more challenging), despite the difficult circumstances of this past year.
Another interesting development is that the availability of free e-books, whether legally or illegally, has increased students’ reading. Indeed, I have lost count of the number of people who have messaged me on social media asking where they can find my books in (free) PDF format. Many people assume that most titles will be freely available somewhere online. When they are, people go get them and read at least a few pages, but when they can be bought for a small cost, many people will ignore them.
The availability of millions of e-books for free download is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, it increases people’s reading, but on the other it lowers sales and thus discourages publishers from taking on titles that will not sell well — for the wrong reasons.
There are perfectly legal websites that offer free e-books: Project Gutenberg offers more than 60,000 free titles; the “Free E-book!” web page of the University of Chicago Press offers one free title each month; IntechOpen is the world’s largest provider of open-access scientific books; and even Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers offer numerous free books for e-readers.
We need to find ways to maximize the benefits of electronic reading while minimizing the negative aspects.
Nidhal Guessoum
The debate over the pros and cons of on-screen reading versus on paper has continued. And recent developments have not settled the issue. On the one hand, high screen fatigue and eye damage greatly increased during the pandemic, while on the other there are now eye-friendly e-reading devices and they easily mesh with laptops. However, children tend to multitask and skim over the material they read on laptops, tablets, smartphones and internet-connected e-readers, and we need to find ways to maximize the benefits of electronic reading while minimizing the negative aspects.
We also need to find ways to entice children to read. Perhaps popular new media such as YouTube videos and podcasts can be used to introduce youngsters to books, magazines and other reading material. For example, I recently produced a series of short videos on great short books from the Arab-Islamic civilization, such as “Hayy Ibn Yaqzan,” the wonderful “Arab Robinson Crusoe” novel from the 12th century. I was pleased to read comments from youngsters saying that my brief summary and commentary had enticed them to read the novel, especially since it is barely 50 pages long.
Other people have regular podcasts and YouTube videos devoted to presenting either famous books or new ones, and this certainly helps encourage people to read.
Reading is not only important for one’s intellectual and moral growth, it shapes one’s personality and view of the world. That is why a favorite question of job interviewers is: What is the most recent book you have read? Similarly, before the winter or spring break or before the Eid holiday, teachers should perhaps tell their students in passing: “I am eager to know, when we return from the break, what you will have read.”
We need to make reading a regular part of our daily lives; buying books, carrying them around, exchanging them with our friends, writing and speaking about them on social media, and so on. And we need to reserve time for reading in our daily or weekly schedules.
Let me close with the exquisite words of the celebrated American author Nora Ephron on the subject: “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on… Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”
• Nidhal Guessoum is a professor at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. Twitter: @NidhalGuessoum
