As someone who researches and teaches in the areas of youth and their reading and information seeking practices, I often wonder what it would be like in my classrooms as well as in the libraries and bookstores that I visit if we began with a few different assumptions when it came to teens and reading. Very often when I tell people that I am working on a study of rural teens and reading, I am met with a response like, "oh that must be hard: teens don't read". And so, I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that teens do read, and even better, that they like to read. I also think that because many young people simply do not share their reading preferences and their reading practices with many of the adults in their lives, we adults have to try harder to learn about them. This activity called "Reading" is perceived by young people to be one of the "3 R's," tied to school proficiency and evaluation. In this context for many teens it is, simply, not a whole lot of fun and not at all engaging. The kind of reading that many young people like to do is not on our radars and it may not be anything like what we like to read ourselves. Teens might also choose to read in different ways and in different kinds of contexts. Other media that we might find intrusive in our reading habits (like televisions, headphones, computers, games, mobile phones) are pervasive in the waking hour activities of many North American young people.
Study after study of reading habits gives strong evidence that teens are reading and they are choosing to read books. Recent large-scale studies from around the world tell us so. Often the results of these studies are couched in terms that make calls for the decline of book reading among young people, and yet, a closer look tells a different story. Even the much-cited NEA Reading at Risk poll tells us that 42.8% of the young people between 18-24 years in the U.S. are literary readers (those respondents who primarily read or listened to novels, short stories, poetry and plays). To be sure, this is cast as a dire decline but still 42.8% of the national population should be cause for celebration. Who knows what the results would have been if people younger than 18 years had been included in the survey? The Canadian study, Reading and Buying Books for Pleasure, tells us that "there seems to be no significant generation gap or factor that would indicate that young people (aged 16 to 24) in Canada are avoiding reading for pleasure" (Heritage Canada 2005, 4).
Not only do teens read, but when asked they tell us that they choose to read because they enjoy it. What are the chief reasons for choosing to read? Relaxation, pleasure and escape. What are some of related pleasures of reading among teens? Identifying with main characters, finding information that helps them in their own lives, vicarious experiences and real-world connections with other young people. Other studies tell us that young people who do not like to read can find pleasure in reading when their own interests are encouraged. (To read more on why teens choose to read, see my chapter in Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community, Libraries Unlimited, 2006).
We also know that teens explore their own interests through a variety of media beyond printed books. There have been several studies of teens' use of electronic media released in recent months (just one example is the PEW/Internet & American Life Project report Teen Content Creators and Consumers). Findings tell us that not only are young people in North America practiced consumers of digital text, they are also creators, producers and distributors of digital texts using a wide and growing stable of media tools. Rather than wringing our hands about how this is moving their attention away from so-called literary reading, we might look at how our own assumptions about what counts as literary reading affects our stance towards young people as readers. For example, the NEA study asked respondents about the use of the Internet "to learn about, read or discuss topics related to literature" - what about using the Internet to read novels, short stories, poetry and news online? What about reading blog commentaries, or editing and reading wikis, or reading and contributing reviews of popular music, books, computer games, films? These areas that might not be seen to have anything to do with "literature" but everything to do with sophisticated literacy practices. We could take our cue from other studies that tell us that Internet use is positively correlated with reading rates: for example, "…results of this survey suggest that the Internet has rather reduced the amount of time spent watching television, reading newspapers and magazines but has not affected the amount of time spent reading books for pleasure" (Heritage Canada 2005, 92). By extending what counts as reading beyond the borders of the printed and bound novel, we might be surprised at how voraciously today's teens read. It is just this type of assessment that today's teen readers' advisors need to make.
In closing, I suggest that the provision of readers' advisory services to teens should include a continuous monitoring of youth cultural products and practices at both local and global scales, (and when appropriate, participation in and engagement with youth culture) so that we can balance on our own experiences with what the "research tells us".
References
Department of Canadian Heritage. 2005. Reading and Buying Books for Pleasure: 2005 National Survey. Final Report (CH44-51/2005E). Available at http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/pubs/lalpd-rbbp/index_e.cfm (accessed September 20, 2006).
Lenhart, Amanda, and Mary Madden. 2005. Teen Content Creators and Consumers. Washington, DC: PEW/Internet & American Life Project. Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp (accessed September 20, 2006).
National Endowment for the Arts. 2004. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. Research Division Report #46. Washington, DC. Available at http://www.nea.gov/news/news04/ReadingAtRisk.html (accessed September 20, 2006).
Paulette Rothbauer is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto where she teaches in the areas of young people's literature, media and information practices. She is currently working on a study of rural teens and reading.