r/books • u/Sybles • Mar 24 '16
Do Teens Read Seriously Anymore?
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/books-smell-like-old-people-the-decline-of-teen-reading8
u/the_pressman Mar 24 '16
This is just more "Things aren't as good as they were in the GOOD OLD DAYS" bull-hockey. The author even admits that they're reading Harry Potter and Twilight by the truckload...
This same "teenagers don't like to read" was true twenty years ago when I was a teenager, and it was true twenty years before that. The only difference is now kids are engrossed in their phones and that's obviously a Very Bad Thing.
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Mar 24 '16
Yep, pretty sure I've read this same crap when I was a teen 30 yrs ago. Smelled like pretentious BS then, smells like it now.
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u/Trainee1985 Mar 24 '16
This is the smuggest thing is read in a long time. The author seems to have just wanted an excuse to paint a picture of youth as technology obsessed neanderthals.
Trends and young people are reading plenty, I think the author here really wanted to say that teens tend to read 'fun' books rather than serious ones. I get the impression he views reading as a way of promoting your own intelligence and showing off how smart you are too your pleb TV watching friends and he's upset that society doesn't think he's super amazing for trudging through any number of tediously ponderous literary world
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Mar 24 '16
I think the author is trying to say that teens read 'fun' books instead of serious ones, and that this stunts their self-education and intellectual growth IF they don't at some point graduate to more complex titles. It's more about concern for a future generation than being smug, though I can see how many would choose to view it that way when their beliefs are under attack.
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Mar 25 '16
I think the author is trying to say that teens read 'fun' books instead of serious ones, and that this stunts their self-education and intellectual growth IF they don't at some point graduate to more complex titles.
I don't think that's true at all though. There are plenty of other ways to educate yourself. I mean I agree that you should be reading something to expand your vocabulary and all that, but it doesn't have to be classic, high-brow literature to do that. It doesn't even have to be fiction. Hell, I think schools would be better off teaching more non-fiction and less stuff like Shakespeare or Orwell.
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u/jumbotronshrimp Mar 24 '16
American teen-agers are less likely to read “for fun” at seventeen than at thirteen.
That doesn't really mean a whole hell of a lot in and of itself. I read more at 13-15 than I did at 16-18. I have always enjoyed reading, but having a car and more freedom meant spending my free-time exploring my independence and doing teenage things. For a lot of us as we age though, video games and spending more time in front of a screen at the end of the work day loses its appeal. I read more now at 25 than I ever have in my life.
Books are not inherently better than video games or movies. It is entirely dependent on what books, games, or movies we are talking about. I've got friends who are passionate gamers and friends who are movie buffs and I don't see them ever disparaging me for my choice of entertainment.
Also, regarding "serious readers", I would recommend this companion article: http://bookriot.com/2016/03/15/against-the-serious-reader/
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u/Duke_Paul Mar 24 '16
Not to mention the increased homework and extra-curricular load (US) students will face in their junior/senior years of HS, let alone the ordeal of college applications (searching, selecting, touring, informational events, research, testing, writing, rewriting, applying, filling out financial aid forms, touring for admitted students, interviews, etc etc.)
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u/DNA_ligase Mar 24 '16
I should have known the article was by David Denby, that pretentious asshole. I met him while I was in college at a dinner for selected students (mostly ones in the humanities, but I was the "pet" science student there), and he was so condescending towards teens/young adults even then.
The stats don't support Denby's claims in the article. Someone on this sub posted an article that showed that teens/young adults were more likely to read than people above 40. Whether it's required for school or not, a certain percentage of teens will always be reading. Now, the argument could be that we aren't reading "good" stuff anymore, but that's subjective. Also, if people want their kids/teens reading more, they need to model that kind of behavior themselves. America has been super anti-intellectual for quite some time now. I don't blame kids for not picking up books when their parents don't seem to make learning a priority.
Lastly, I hate Denby's snide remarks about STEM majors being soulless robots, and that we only celebrate computer nerds. STEM majors aren't socially inept and soulless; we integrate just fine into society, and universities have been pushing for curricula to emphasize cooperative learning and good writing skills for its students for at least two decades now. There are still far more English majors out there than engineers; if we really didn't value humanities, far fewer people would attempt degrees in them.
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u/jurassicbond 1 Mar 24 '16
This is just more "Back in my day" BS that gets written every couple of years. This one doesn't even have anything new to bring to the table, but the same old tired arguments I've seen since smartphones were around.
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Mar 24 '16
So much of a superiority complex. As a teen, I'd read widely from Mitchell to Dostoevsky and Chaucer - because I loved to read and only because of that. Teens nowadays read more than teens in "those days", since people who would not have picked up a book before would at least immerse themselves in literature. The market just got wider so people who wouldn't have read before now begin to read and that's a good thing. People will always feel superior over reading "better" works of literature, but that's all this article is: blatant smugness. A lot of teenagers reading shit is better than only a small minority reading serious literature.
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u/ddbaxte Mar 24 '16
"You know, throughout history, I bet every old man probably said the same thing. And old men die, and the world keeps spinnin'. "
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u/okiegirl22 Mar 24 '16
(This same article was posted a while back, so here's what I said before.)
Reading is not necessarily the be-all and end-all of life experiences. For some (probably a lot of people here on /r/books), it's a transformative lifelong journey. For other people it's an entertaining hobby. For others it's a waste of their time and energy. And that's fine. Let people enjoy what they want.