THE JOY OF READING? E-book readership among kids are on the rise, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're enjoying them. That's one of our impressions from the numbers in the "latest Kids & Family Reading Report" from Scholastic.
Based on a fall 2012 sample of 1,074 students ages 6 to 17 years old and their parents (2,148 respondents total), the survey finds that the percentage of kids who have read an e-book nearly doubled from 25% in 2010 to 46% in 2012. But among them, 80% say they still read for fun primarily in print. Particularly worrisome is the finding that "importance, enjoyment, and frequency of reading books for fun has decreased among girls since 2010." An increasing percentage of parents also echoed concerns that their kids aren't reading enough for fun, which begs the question: so what are they reading?
As we tend to associate interactive features in e-books with the concept of fun and engagement, the survey offers a look at which attributes the respondents cared about. Seventy percent of children and parents, for instance, thought highlighting is important, though researcher Annie Murphy Paul has debunked that technique as a "waste of time." Further insights are available into the changing relationship between reading habits and other activities like gaming and social networking.
