Why young people are reading fewer books

Why we need to understand how the internet has changed young people’s attitudes to reading: a free report

“Attitude” is not everything, of course, but it counts for a lot.  The young person who enjoys reading will self-evidently read more than the young person who thinks books are old fashioned or just plain boring.

But of late something has happened – for researchers have noted a change both in the attitude of many young people towards reading and in the way they make judgements on the validity of the knowledge that they have.

Indeed it is being suggested that this is quite probably one of the biggest changes in attitude towards reading and knowledge since the evolution of mass market paperbacks 90 years ago.

The first awareness that a change of immense proportions was happening occurred when academics started to complain that some undergraduates who were perfectly capable of taking their courses were simply not reading set texts at all.

Research also showed that many of these students who regularly used the internet were not accepting that they knew facts (even where they had a perfect knowledge of an issue) unless they could verify the fact on the internet.  In short, they have started to believe the internet more than their own learned knowledge.

Such attitudes towards reading have also permeated through secondary and primary school, but it has taken a while to understand exactly what is happening in terms of how young people now see books and magazines.

And it has taken even longer to work out how knowledge can be presented to bright, but reading-averse young people.  However new research has revealed a way forward.

The full details of the research and the solution are contained in the free report, “Understanding how the internet has changed young people’s attitudes to reading and what can be done about it”.  The report gathers together research and commentaries from various academic sources and presents a new clear approach to working with young people who simply don’t read books and who doubt their own knowledge unless they can verify it on-line.

For a copy of this report simply email click on the link below:

http://www.files.schools.co.uk/How_to_overcome_the-aversion-to-reading-in-the-internet-generation.pdf