Government Study: Americans Reading Less

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Government Study: Americans Reading Less
So there is a new study (Full PDF, Executive Summary) that has just been released from the (American) National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) saying that children are no longer reading, that "15- to 24-year-olds spend only 7-10 minutes per day on voluntary reading." There has been much angst about this in the media. But if you actually read the study, you find that they're talking mostly about books - and that things like surfing the web are not considered reading! Perhaps they should examine the behaviour of web users again - I have it on good authority that a lot of time spent on the web is time spend reading (oh, and writing too!). More...