My youngest son (10) is much more of a reader than his brother, usually carrying one or two large books around with him, but he also spends an enormous amount of time playing video games and reading magazines. He learned to read by watching mom and dad play FFVI. He has read through 5.5 of 7 Harry Potter books so far, the Hobbit, To Kill a Mockingbird, and is currently reading Journey to the Center of the Earth. Granted, he’s a kid surrounded by books, but he doesn’t appear to be an anomaly at his school.

I suspect that the type of pleasure reading has shifted, rather than the amount. I read blogs for literally hours a day, but read books for only an hour or so most days anymore. Some of that is because I can read blogs at my desk when I’m supposed to be working.

To borrow a phrase from Pandagon here, this appears to be a “sign of the non-apocalypse”

A lot of people I know almost never read commercial fiction when they can get fanfic.

The biggest group of readers I’ve encountered lately: truck drivers.
They are required by law to spend 10 hours in the sleeper berth of the truck.
No one wants to sleep all 10. So a lot of them read.

Secondly, what do they count as reading? I don’t care for fiction because I feel most of what I have read does not speak to me as much as my academic sources or of course feminist blogs such as this one. I think this study is just another bs way to claim that current generations are apathetic and lazy. I’m sorry, but most everyone I know in the age group underlined is VERY aware of world events, politics, etc.

They also mix up different kinds of reading throughout the report: sometimes they talk about ‘leisure reading’, sometimes about reading books, sometimes about ‘literary reading’.

The real question is literacy, and whether people read outside of when they’re forced to. That’s not what this study is about; it’s a press release about how the NEA needs more help in fulfilling its mission. It’s no different than the USDA issuing a report sounding the alarm that Americans aren’t getting enough to eat because beef consumption is down.

Just like in the previous report, the NEA is not very clear about what they mean by “reading”. When they say teens are reading nothing at all for pleasure, do they mean not reading a book, as in the previous table? No ‘literary’ (i.e. non-fiction books)?

The study says:

Unless “book-reading” is specifically mentioned, study
results on voluntary reading should be taken as referencing all varieties of leisure
reading (e.g., magazines, newspapers, online reading), and not books alone.

So when the study says that 50% of high school seniors and nearly 65% of college seniors spend less than one hour a week reading for pleasure, that doesn’t mean just books or literature, that means at all.

When the NEA starts panicking because the readers are the ones who visit museums and volunteer and attend cultural events, they are missing the point that a declining economy and dwindling middle class means fewer people have the luxury of free time those activities imply.

It’s a crap study, and it’s always a crap study, every time they send out their press release.

I read a lot of fanfiction and, yes, you have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff, but I’ve found fanfic I would consider head-and-shoulders above professionally published work, that introduce and demonstrate very interest ideas and interpretations of the original canon.

And video games not involving any reading or reading of considerable length? Ha! Try playing a Phoenix Wright game. Enough words there for a short novel.

That said, I read a lot of blogs.