Are Teens Reading Anymore?
On my college campus, teachers bemoan the fact that young people don’t read as much as previous generations did. We operate on the assumption that because students don’t seem interested in reading what we assign, they don’t read much at all. But is that true? Studies that look at the reading habits of middle school and high school young people show that the proportion of this age group participating in leisure reading has not changed much in recent years. A number of studies suggest three out of four teens regularly engage in reading as a leisure activity. Better than half of young people read books at least occasionally. [Rosemary Hopper, “What Are Teenagers Reading? Adolescent Fiction Reading Habits and Reading Choices,” Literacy, 39(3), 113-120.] Since 1999, the American Library Association has done an annual online survey about the reading habits of adolescents. The results of their surveys confirm most young people are, in fact, reading for pleasure. There are interesting trends t
