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Teens reading, seniors turning to video games

Leisure habits undergoing transition

By: Shannon Proudfoot

Posted: 01/8/2010 8:59 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Harry Potter books got today’s teens reading at a young age. (ASSOCIATED PRESS / UNIVERSAL STUDIOS)

WE'RE about to witness a reversal of trends, the WorldFutureSocietyprojects, with young people picking up more books and older people plugging into more video games.

"Leisure habits are undergoing what some might consider some surprising transitions," says Patrick Tucker, senior editor of the society's magazine, The Futurist.

Time-use statistics already show this in action, he says. In 2007, U.S. teens age 15 to 19 spent almost twice as much time reading for pleasure as they did the year before, while adults age 75 and older doubled their time spent on a computer and playing video games.

Over the last two decades, reports on the state of reading from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts typically carried gloomy titles like Reading at Risk and opened with a eulogy for literature in peril, he says. But the endowment's 2009 report reversed a 20-year downward trend and for the first time showed increasing rates of reading, he says, with young adults age 18 to 24 leading the way.

"Even outside of class, they were spending more time reading," he says. "Everybody in the world is convinced that kids in particular and young people beneath the age of 24, this is the age group that's going to do everything online, that isn't interested in any sort of literary activity, isn't interested in something slow like reading a book."

Publishers who figured out how to market books that appeal to a broad audience, such as the Harry Potter and Twilight series, are largely responsible for this, Tucker says, because people who start reading at an early age are likely to continue that habit throughout their lives.

On the other end of the age scale, increased broadband Internet access is making video games more popular with an older crowd because online games are more fun and accessible when they don't require purchasing a game system or cartridge in a store, Tucker says.

And with millions of baby boomers heading into retirement, video game developers have been savvy to start including older adults in their business model, he says.

-- Canwest News Service

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