Scholastic's Report on the Reading Habits of Kids & Teens...
From PW Daily today:
A new report released today from Scholastic corroborates the findings of the company’s 2006 report on children’s reading habits, finding that pleasure reading in children begins to decline at age eight and continues to do so into the teen years. The study found that a majority of children (68%) think it is “extremely” or “very” important to read for pleasure, and “like” or “love” doing so. However, that number decreases with age: 82% percent of children ages five to eight “like” or “love” reading, compared to 55% for children ages 15 to 17. It also found that although children can readily envision a future in which reading and technology are increasingly intertwined, nearly two thirds prefer to read physical books, rather than on a computer screen or digital device.
The Harry Potter-related findings are interesting:
As to the influence of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, of the children who had read the books, almost three-quarters said the series had made them interested in reading other books. Some, however, would be happy simply to have more Harry in their lives: 31% of children don’t believe the series is over.
Click here to read the whole article on Publishers Weekly's website.
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1 comment:
This is interesting. It made me think of two things--first, the ages at which reading, for kids, includes being read to by parents, etc. I wonder if that has something to do with the decline--the age at which parents are doing less reading together.
The other thing that came to me is watching some of the young kids at my son's school who were struggling with learning to read. There is such a huge gap for a while, and I do know that the kids who weren't as far along often verbalized abilities and attitudes about reading that weren't necessarily the way they truly felt. When I think back, I can see at least two (out of 15-20) kids in my son's class who would not have admitted to a stranger (i.e., the people doing this study) that they didn't like reading, not when they knew how much they were "supposed" to love it. I do believe that kids read less as they get older, but I also wonder if some of this statistic is a little bit more honesty as the kids age?
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