The National Endowment for the Arts today released an alarming report that analyzed data from over two dozen studies about the reading habits of Americans. No one is surprised in the least that young Americans are reading for fun less, scoring in tests lower, writing good worse, and growing into adult Americans who don’t read or write good. (Pride prevents me from continuing before I clarify that the previous sentence is written poorly to make an important point: That my own command of the English language is, in fact, masterful.)
I could piously brag about how I’ve been a lifelong reader and smarty pants. But when I grew up, my choices of entertainment consisted of watching kung-fu re-runs on UHF television, renting a two-year-old movie on VHS, listening to my static music collection, or reading. And so I read, usually to enhance my knowledge about prurient topics such as sex, hedonist subcultures, mysticism, and nonconformity.
If 15-year old Meredith had the internet, a cell phone and an iPod, there’s no way she would have been holed up in her bedroom reading William Burroughs, Oscar Wilde, Sweet Valley High, and how-to manuals on astral projection. She would have been cruising eSpin the Bottle for hotties, fantasizing about being a Suicide Girl, and habitually downloading music at Insound.
