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By: Tawo
Social media is great right? It offers online users several ways to connect with one another and post ideas and thoughts. Someone posting a picture of their dog is much different from someone posting a photo about their time in Italy. While many praise social media and technology there are a handful of people who find it as a potential risk and danger to society. There has been discussions surrounding social media’s influence on book reading. I along with many believe social media and tech ruin our human focus on reading through books, online and especially hardcover/paperback copies. In 2020, there was a study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where during the Covid-19 Pandemic they monitored higher education institutions in Nigeria where students were asked about their social media addiction and the pandemics effects on media and daily reading. The study proved that most students were guilty of social media addiction and that out of 1300 students surveyed over 97% used their phones to access social and chat with friends and families or shop for materialistic possessions. Following this information they were able to find that 97% of students only read books to study an exam, where 67% said they never go to the library and 43% of them read books daily. The concluding results showed that over 84.4% were in agreement that social had a negative effect on reading habits.
The above reputable source along with countless other online forums and discussions help to solidify the argument. Now, playing devil’s advocate there are so many other arguments that back up the idea of skim reading that GenZ student and even millenials are known for. Many will argue that using social media and reading through news, Tiktok and Instagram captions counts as reading. Sure, it does count as reading something! Someone’s story or experience was shared and read of course no discredit there! But it’s not in the same sense as sitting down and reading a good book like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” or “To Kill a Mockingbird ” by Harper Lee. Aside from fun reading that has seemed to slowly fade with media innovation; previously mentioned above it seems students want to read the necessary gist of a book or article just to complete the assignment or pass the test. Not truly taking in all the content and being able to use it for more than just school assignments. The need to read a paper book seems to be replaced by media platforms and e-books. Not for personal enjoyment but more for task completion. Once again I mentioned above the reason select groups are concerned with growth of media is because it’s seen as a huge distraction from reading books but worse the idea that it hurts one’s ability to read at all. Lessening the chance of absorbing the correct information or understanding the passage. In all fairness both sides have very good points it’s more that in the literal sense of the situation it becomes apparent outside of research and evidence that Covid was a huge shift in this change confirming this debate. Many students logged off from school and many young children between 5-13 found that it was much more difficult learning to read and write then previous student classes before them that hadn’t experienced Covid-19.
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