Do you like reading? Do you read for pleasure, or only if you have to, for school? Not so long ago, children and teenagers used to read a lot of comics(漫画), novels and books of short stories. Sometimes, if the story was really exciting, they were so keen to find out what happened to their favorite characters that they would read under the bedclothes at night with a flashlight.
1[■] Today’s teens also have access to the Internet and instead of reading books, as earlier generations did, spend time on social media, messaging and chatting to their friends. As a result, the ability to concentrate is being affected and young people have a shorter attention span(持续时间) than their parents and grandparents. At least that’s what many people believe, but recent research suggests something different.
In contrast to what a lot of older people think, teens don’t in fact just use new technologies to talk to their friends. 2[■] A World Book Day survey of teenage reading habits revealed over 40% read books on a computer, almost 20% on a mobile device(设备) and around 14% on a tablet, with around 10% reading on an e-reader.
Why should this be? Well, the British telecommunications supervisor Ofcom points out that children as young as six understand digital technology better than adults. 3[■] They even take it for granted. Teens today have never known a time without the Internet, so it is as natural to them to use Internet-enabled devices as it was to their parents to use books.
So, what are teenagers reading? 4[■] In fact, this is not the case. Today’s teens still like to read the classics as well as modern fiction and they have no difficulty in reading them on a digital device. Adventure crime and spy stories are all popular, with some authors like John Grisham and Ian Rankin as popular among teens as adults. Among the classics Charles Dickens remains a favorite, along with Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas.
The classics do not only include novels. 5[■] It isn’t only older comic-style books that are proving popular with teens these days either, but the modern-day comic, the graphic novel is gaining in popularity everywhere. So it seems there is no danger of teens losing the habit of reading any time soon!