SimonJester88 t1_jddmijp wrote on March 23, 2023 at 5:15 PM

Its peer pressure. Monkey see, monkey do, and MOST children do not read novels or nonfiction text unless assigned homework. Also, US adults read less books these days toos. Kids grow up seeing their peers and their adult role models NOT reading and develop similar habits.

Now that being said...I would not be surprised if youth today actually read more words per day than previous generations ..We are staring at our screens all day and the internet needs to be read in many places still.

GodOfDucks t1_jdf0zt0 wrote on March 23, 2023 at 10:38 PM

>Its peer pressure. Monkey see, monkey do

This is absolutely true and key to solving this issue - Parents and the kid's home life are a far bigger influence than their school (is in most cases).

Children learn through imitating those around them, that's how they develop their sense of what is "normal". If there are no books in the house, and the parents don't read themselves, it's almost certain they will grow up reading little to nothing and reading for pleasure will be an activity they won't even consider doing.

So sad :(

PartyPorpoise t1_jdgev2w wrote on March 24, 2023 at 5:13 AM

I totally agree with your first point. Most parents aren't modeling reading. Everyone complains about kids being hooked on their phones, but that's not surprising when the adults are so hooked too. Parents can say "reading is good" all they want, but if they're not actually modeling it then it doesn't do much good.

I'm going to argue on the latter point, though. A lot of popular social media now is image and video based rather than text-based. Text that is there tends to be pretty short. I doubt the average teen today is reading much on their smartphone.