With the increased accessibility to other entertainment mediums, such as film, music, and video games, people have begun to wonder if literature is dying as a form of recreation. Over the past few years, Americans began spending less time reading for recreational use. A recent survey showed that less than 50% of Americans regularly read any form of literature.
This survey states that less than 50% of Americans regularly read literature, which is astonishing. It is even more surprising when we consider that around 50 years ago, during the 1970s, an average of 60% of Americans read regularly. This raises the question, what has changed over the past 50 years? Recent studies have shown that due to the increase in other forms of entertainment through media, the overall attention span of Americans has declined significantly.
Researchers have been concerned about Americans’ decreasing attention spans. They concluded that the arrival of the Internet primarily caused this decrease. Due to the accessibility of modern technology, many Americans have reported serious addiction to devices such as TVs, computers, and phones. This addiction to the Internet has caused many Americans to become more distracted by technology and, in turn, less occupied with books and other forms of literature.
The rise of the Internet is a major cause of the decline in American reading literature because it has changed how we consume information. Social media has been studied to cause people to become addicted to consuming massive amounts of information. Americans in the past experienced and analyzed information as an art form through literature. However, with the rise of the Internet, Americans have been consuming massive amounts of information from social media platforms.
This addictive consumption of information, often referred to as doom scrolling, has led to many Americans spending hours upon hours of their time watching short videos covering large quantities of often random information found on the Internet. This act of doom-scrolling has recently become the norm of society, and it has caused many people to prefer scrolling through social media over reading a book.
However, the Internet has not been entirely detrimental to literature; instead, it has offered some benefits to access books and other forms of literature. The Internet has allowed people to access different forms of literature more efficiently, such as through digital libraries. There have also been more online news organizations enabling easy access to online articles about recent news and events. These Internet uses have made it easier for forms of literature to be produced and spread out to readers.
With the rise of the Internet and other forms of media, it is important to consider that over the past 50 years, many additions have been made to the entertainment industry. With the entertainment industry expanding beyond the sole use of literature, it makes sense for public attention to be divided among the new entertainment mediums. Americans do not solely rely on literature as much as they used to 50 years ago. This lack of sole reliance is likely why not as many Americans read as frequently as Americans used to in the 1970s.
In conclusion, literature has changed significantly with the rise of the Internet, for Americans do not read as much as before the Internet was introduced. Americans have also developed a shorter attention span and more addictive tendencies due to the vast and constant flow of social media, which has caused Americans to be less occupied with reading. However, the Internet has increased the accessibility of literature, as there are now online libraries and digital news organizations. So, the Internet has caused fewer Americans to read regularly and has divided Americans’ attention across entertainment media. The Internet has also increased the accessibility of books and other forms of literature, which has allowed literature to have the potential to spread further to larger audiences than ever before.
