Below is an excellent article by a teen on teen readers that is from the YCteen website. The article is both inspiring and yet scary for our society.
What’s Wrong With Reading?
Recently I was “caught” reading at McDonald’s by a group of kids at my school. I say “caught” because many of my peers consider reading to be a lame activity. They think it’s something that only geeks do.
But there I was, reading Med Head by James Patterson, a mystery/suspense author, when they strolled by. One girl named Tiffany walked up and said “Is that a…” she rubbed her eyes and acted like she couldn’t believe what I was doing. “…book?” she finished in a sarcastic, incredulous way.
It wasn’t the first time that something like that happened. When I occasionally go to the library, kids ask me why I’m reading. “It’s a library, that’s what you’re supposed to do!” They just shake their heads.
I don’t understand why they think reading is dumb. To me, being a reader means being open-minded, intellectual, and willing to learn new things. Reading has helped empower me and teach me important things that I might not have known about otherwise, like African history and world leaders. Also it’s just fun to get into the story, especially if the writing is witty.
Follow this link to read the rest of the article.
Way back in the late 1970s I had the same sort of experiences in my junior high school. Book-reading = nerdy/stupid has been around for far too long.
I think you should do what I did. Get them all back by becoming a writer. I’ve just published my first book, and have just had a short story accepted for publication. It takes time and effort to write, but your post is clear and well written. You’re already on the way to being a good writer.
Thank you for posting.
I’m a 57 year old great grandmother n some of my friends call me a nerd for reading so much! Most think that I let my housework slide THIS is not true! ADULT readers are NOT Lazy!
Thanks for sharing, Anthony. While I completely understand that such experiences are possible and indeed may be frequent among teenagers, I’m a little surprised.
First, because that goes completely counter to the reading statistics for the United States which show an explosion in reading among the younger population (18 to 24 group rising much faster than other segments of the population – but of course that’s the group just older than teenagers…)
Second, because the style of that article is…so grown-up. Obviously re-written by an adult…Was there somewhere an attempt to shock or maybe a hidden agenda? Ok, I could be wrong but the style is simple not that of an adolescent…
Claude,
Thanks for commenting. I am sure there was some editing of the article. The real point of the article is teen reading. One of the teens in my house is a 15 year old female. She has read the Twilight and Hunger Games series but no other books (besides the required ones from school) in the past 2 years.
I don’t think reading is “uncool” to her, but her reading is not with books. At times she will read for hours on her computer. What does she read? Fan fiction of her favorite boys bands which is almost exclusively written by other teens. I had her show me the sites and the amount of times the most popular stories have been “liked” or read. The most popular story on the site took her almost 2 hours to read. I read a little bit of it and was impressed by the quality of writing. This story had been “liked” over 85,000 times.
Is she reading quality literature? Don’t really know. Is she reading? Yes and that is more important to me at this stage of her life.
Always thinking from the business side of it. I told her that these authors should publish some of the fan fiction for the Kindle. She thought that was very “uncool”.
Thanks and have a great day.