For years, critics have bemoaned the decline of reading among both children and adults, but new data actually presents hard numbers on how this behavior has actually declined. According to analysis conducted by Jean M. Twenge, PhD, of the recent Monitoring the Future report, kids these days have all but stopped reading.
“Wait, we’ve heard this before,” you might think, and you’re not wrong. Even when preteens, teens, and young adults became somewhat early adopters of digital reading tech, the paper-only crowd still voiced concern. Now, though, the evidence straight from the survey respondents themselves points to a decline in long-form reading, regardless of whether it was paper or digital.