Is Reading Online Really "Reading"?

Books are not Nadia Konyk's thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

A slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A's and B's at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Ms. Konyk said, "I'm just pleased that she reads something anymore."

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[loril]

I worked as a librarian for many years and I would rate reading as my number one hobby/personal interest in life. I simply cannot fathom my life without books and I consider myself a bibliophile. However...

I have also increased my use of the Web and am now very "addicted" to it myself. So any criticism I might level at young people feels like pot---kettle stuff. I would say that I am glad that I had books for years before the Internet came along. I was so completely "hooked" on reading books by the time I was about 5 years old, that nothing can dislodge that. Today's kids don't have that background, so their relationship with reading may put traditional books on equal footing with the Web or else, as the article indicates, put the Web ahead of books.

When I worked, I attempted to present the widest variety of materials to kids when I did classroom visits. The kids expected me to book talk the novels that their teachers/parents want them to read. They were pleasantly surprised when I also brought in graphic novels, non fiction about popular bands, sports or other pop culture subjects, hair styling magazines, gaming magazines etc. My approach was to put it ALL out there and remind them that only one place had everything and more...for FREE...and that place is the library. This got a lot of them very excited.

[VOTER]

Public Libraries - USE THEM OR LOSE THEM!

I can't imagine a world without libraries. While I love using my computer for reading articles, newspapers from around the world and postings at blogs, I am totally hooked on reading BOOKS, fiction and non-fiction.

When our son was little, he accompanied me to the public library and could check out books using my library card.

On his 6th Birthday, he was old enough to have a library card of his own. His dad and I made this a Big Deal. It was presented as the MAJOR GIFT instead of the toy trucks, action figures, etc.. He was so proud to have it and use it.

Today he is an avid reader of all things but especially books.

Parents and teachers should encourage youngsters to read BOOKS.

[AmandaBC]

"I can't imagine a world without libraries."

Me neither, though I'm sure Republicans would call it a paradise.. ;)

[RobinLandseadel]

The first time I read Joseph Conrad's "Heat of Darkness" was last year online. There's a library out in Australia that has the entirety of Proust's "Ã la Recherche du Temps Perdu" in Moncrieff's translation:

Proust'shttp://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/

It's just a matter of a short time before devices for reading text on the screen advance to the point where e-books will be in competition with traditional printed text. As regards magazines and newspapers, we are already there.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote down in his magnificent "Library of Babel" the concept of "a single volume of the common size, printed in nine or ten-point type, that would consist of an infinite number of pages." containing all the books of the world in a single volume. We are very close to that right now: The Adelaide library presentation of "Lost Time" has each novel within the novel appear as a single unpaginated sheet of seemingly infinite length but no thicker than the pixels on your screen..

[AmandaBC]

"Heat of Darkness"

Is that the porno spoof? ;)

[RobinLandseadel]

. . . .!spoo

[Deaninphilly]

It would depend on what they are reading. If it's just articles, blogs and other sources of the like then no it's not reading. I suggest parents find the sites where you can read whole books and novels and steer their children to those in the hopes they will actually read.

[research]

What if I read a novel on the computer?

[DaOne]

Is reporting online really reporting?

[AmandaBC]

Is huffpo a serious provider of information or just a bunch of links to external news sources, interspersed with ads and assorted spyware?

[gevan]

Sorry, I didn't read this article. What did it say.

[VOTER]

LOL!