Isn’t it depressing how electronic devices seem to have completely taken over? When you’re on a train, what do you see? Almost everyone is on their phones, iPods, tablets or some kind of funky electronic device and all are almost always either on social media or listening to music. There are barely one or two people who have a book open in their hands – but we need more people like that.
I was watching an episode of Russell Howard’s Good News recently and a man was talking about how he just doesn’t see anyone reading on public transport anymore. He asked, how do I make my book stand out so others want to read more and Russell replied by saying, Just make your book look like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world… use facial expressions to express how amazing it is – which I thought was hilarious but then also sad in a way, as it clearly shows that many people just don’t really have an interest in reading any more.
This is not just about what you see on public transport, though. Fewer and fewer teenagers are interested in reading for pleasure. I feel as if there’s a direct relationship between advances in technology and the decreasing number of young people who read books. I’m currently doing my A levels and I’ve realised that hardly any of my friends or fellow students have time to read anymore. When they aren’t studying, they’re on social media, so clearly when they do have spare time they don’t make it time to read.
I know that younger children used to read the most because they have the most free time and I often see my local library flooded with children in the summer holidays. When I was younger, I remember borrowing twelve books at a time from the library and just reading all the time. But now younger children also have access to technology, my younger siblings included, so they very rarely talk to each other at home because one is busy on her iPod, the other on his PSP and the other on her tablet and it’s a constant cycle day after day. Not once have I seen them pick up a book by themselves.
It only gets worse as you get older. I feel as though in school students learn to loathe books: we have to analyse and interpret and remember quotations... and sometimes we start to believe that what we are taught for our exams is all reading is about, when of course it isn’t. Reading should be for pleasure and for fun, and students should not experience it as a chore.
I think reading is about escaping and being able to live in another world, then another and another, and almost everyone who reads wants to become an author, myself included, so that they can create their own worlds and adventures. The beauty of reading is that everyone loves it for a different reason, and once people read more, they will realise that they love it. People just need to take the time out of their day, even if it’s just ten minutes, to give books a go.