As an avid reader, a month ago I was depressed to read that apparently 46% of Americans did not read any books in 2023. If you manage to read just one book a month – just one book per month! -- that puts you in the top 20%. Combine that with the recent wave of book bans and, increasingly, librarians being under siege, it sure seems like grim times for a literate society.
No, the library isn't dead. Credit: Bing Image Creator
But, it turns out, things might not be quite as bad as
I’d feared, and the hope comes from Gen Z and millennials.
A pair of Portland State University professors, Kathi
Inman Berens and Rachel Noorda, summarize the results of their
new research in an article in The Conversation: Gen
Z and millennials have an unlikely love affair with their local libraries.
In a world of TikTok, gaming, and
streaming, who’d have thought?
According to their survey, 54% of Gen Z/millennials have
visited a library in the past year – versus 45% of Gen X and 43% of baby
boomers. Even over half of the 43% Gen Z/millennials who don’t claim to be
readers say they’ve visited a library in the past year. The researchers found: “Browsing
public libraries is Gen Z’s #3 preferred place to discover books. Libraries are
the #5 preferred place for millennials to discover books.”
 |
| Credit: Berens and Noorda |
The library provides a number of things beyond books: a safe, free place to hang out, important resources and advice during big life changes such as career transition, parenthood, new language acquisition, or learning to read; Wi-fi enabled work spaces; and creativity resources like maker spaces and media production equipment.
The authors argue that, whether the patrons are checking books out or not, libraries serve as a low cost marketing venue for publishers, allowing readers to find books risk-free. They further see print books as fitting better into a social media age than one might think:
When fans are also creators, printed books make good props in visual media like TikTok short videos and Instagram Reels. There are no TikTok videos of ebooks! Printed books can be imaginatively used as conversation pieces or expressive objects.
Every library should prominently post “There are no TikTok videos of ebooks!”
Gen Z/millennials are also going to bookstores, with
58% buying a book there in the past year. Indeed, the research found: “Gen Z
and millennials slightly prefer bookstores to libraries for printed book
discovery.”
Given all this, it’s shocking how we’re treating
libraries and the people who staff them. “We’re no longer seeing a parent have a conversation with a
teacher or librarian about a book their child is reading,” Deborah
Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for
Intellectual Freedom, told The
New York Times. “We’re seeing partisan groups demand the removal of
books that they’re told are bad books, that they are not even reading, because
they don’t meet the political or moral agenda.”
The Times further reported: “People who normally preside
over hushed sanctuaries are now battling groups that demand the mass removal of
books and seek to control library governance. Last year, more than 150 bills in 35 states aimed to restrict access to
library materials, and to punish library workers who do not comply.”
Despite all this, libraries remain a special place, at least for Gen Z/millennials.
Professors Berens and Noorda speculate: “Gen Zers and millennials still see
libraries as a kind of oasis – a place where doomscrolling and information
overload can be quieted, if temporarily…Perhaps Gen Zers’ and millennials’
library visits, like their embrace
of flip phones and board
games, are another life hack for slowing down.”
-----------
Contrary to the gloomy reading statistics I started
with, Professors Berens and Noorda found that young people claim to read 2
print books, 1 ebook, and 1 audiobook a month, with Gen Z slightly
outpacing millennials. When asked generally about reading habits, reading print
books are, not surprisingly, less common than reading text messages, email,
social media, and websites, but is solidly in 5th place (50%).
 |
| Credit: Berens and Noorda |
Despite what you might believe about the prevalence of
gaming and the creator/influencer economy, when asked about their “media identity,”
57% of Gen Z/millennial identity as readers, versus 53% as gamers and 52% as
fans. Reading is not dead.
Despite the encouraging
research, we need to keep in mind that U.S. reading scores are at
their lowest point in decades (along with math scores). There is now a movement
called “the
science of reading” that many educators (and legislators) are advocating, but
a new
study suggests a different culprit: students read better, learn better,
when they read text on paper instead of on a screen. As the authors (Froud, et.
alia) report: “Reading both expository and complex texts
from paper seems to be consistently associated with deeper comprehension and
learning.”
The authors say: “We
do think that these study outcomes warrant adding our voices … in suggesting
that we should not yet throw away printed books, since we were able to observe
in our participant sample an advantage for depth of processing when reading
from print.”
John R MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s Magazine, wrote about the study in The Guardian, and cited a speech MIT neuroscientist John Gabrielli gave last fall about the use of technology to improve reading:
I am impressed how educational technology has had no effect on scale, on reading outcomes, on reading difficulties, on equity issues.
How is it that none of it has lifted, on any scale, reading? … It’s like people just say, ‘Here is a product. If you can get it into a thousand classrooms, we’ll make a bunch of money.’ And that’s OK; that’s our system. We just have to evaluate which technology is helping people, and then promote that technology over the marketing of technology that has made no difference on behalf of students … It’s all been product and not purpose.
We have a “product” that works; it’s called a book. We
have a place that nurtures and encourages young people to read them; it’s
called a library. We scream and yell about the pernicious influences of social
media while dragging libraries and “controversial” books into the cultural wars,
and then wonder why reading scores plummet.
Let’s keep libraries an oasis. If Gen Z/millennials get
it, why don’t the rest of us?
No comments:
Post a Comment