What Does the Blogosphere Have In Store For the English Language?
I had an interesting conversation with a client the other day about how the Internet is affecting humans’ reading habits and how we learn and how it shapes our thought processes. She believed that the way we get information now – bundled into condensed, small bits online – has steered people, and most particularly children, away from reading books, essays and substantive pieces of literature that really encourage deep thinking and analysis.
This is really interesting though, because I bet people – kids included – read a whole lot more than previous generations simply because they get so much of their information from a computer screen. The mainstreaming of blogs has literally created a whole new generation of readers who might not have ever bought a magazine, let alone a book. So, is it a double-edged sword? Do we really have more readers now, but with less comprehension?
An article in USA Today this week highlighted how kids’ book reading habits are evolving, using a study by Scholastic on childhood reading. Among the findings:
- From 1984 to 2004, the percentage of 17-year-olds who “never or hardly ever” read for fun rose from 9 percent to 19 percent;
- On average, one in four kids read for fun every day – but that 22 percent rarely, if ever, do;
- And as kids get older, the percentage who rarely read for fun grows from 8 percent to 37 percent.
But also, as this post points out, the study also showed that two-thirds of kids are extending their reading experience online by finding out more about the books and authors they do read.
So, kids are reading more online, but yet reading less offline. Does that mean that kids are getting less out of what they read? I’m not buying it. Certainly, what people are reading has changed over the years, but I take myself as an example. I was a voracious reader as a kid and still am (though not as much, admittedly), but I never got into the classics – or “lit-trit-chuh” as my English teacher friend calls it. I’ve only read one one Steinbeck book – which was great – and don’t have much interest in Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or even the heavier authors like Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy.
I like reading simple pulp novels, comedy or non-fiction about politics and just have never had the want or need to read the classics. Has this affected my comprehension and attention? Yeah, probably – I’m definitely a victim of the bite-sized information era. I consume an enormous amount of news and most of it is in condensed blog posts and have no patience for the bloated writing of magazines like The New Yorker or The Atlantic. Then again, I read every single thing that every political blogger on The Atlantic’s Web site posts – very smart, insightful stuff without fluffy, unnecessary writing.
There’s no question that the Internet is changing reading habits, but I’m not ready to accept that it’s for the bad quite yet. As long as more people are reading, that’s a good thing – the package it comes in is secondary.
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Christina Furtado
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Marc Perramond
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Jason Mandell