In several countries, including Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Poland and Lithuania, the gender gap in reading was even larger than the OECD average, reaching nearly 50 points in some cases.
ok, this is extremely worrisome.
It gets worse as the male market shrinks, publishers refuse male market books that don't perform as well in female ones, and then men have even less to read to try and reverse the trend.
I've read a few articles that discuss this, one discussed a panel put together by big publishing houses to address the lack of male readership. The panel had 13 participants 12 were women in the publishing industry. There conclusion was that men just didn't have the capacity to read the material that was being published today - when in fact most of what is being published is focused on very specific more feminine population. Sounded to me like there was no real desire to change what was working for them so they just blamed men for not wanting to read the books that were being published.
Interesting observation.
I guess guardians and teachers need to get children experience with self-publishing to inspire.
In the chart it shows a sudden and steep decline in 2012.
The iPhone debuted in 2007, the rest of the world had largely caught up to the touchscreened pocket computer by 2010 and by 2012 every phone had a camera. The market has been flooded ever since.
Obviously, reading adoption has more to do with parents and schools but it's an interesting correlation on the timeline.
Quite a shame. Reading can save lives and enrich one in a way nothing else does.
When I have kids there will be a mandatory reading period everyday before bed, and limited screen time.
Making it mandatory might be counterproductive, but encouraging it from an early age is probably wise.
My current thinking is that screen time should be kept to a minimum in the early years. The health department in my country recommends that kids don't get a smartphone until 13 years old, which might just be sensible.
Mandatory? Nah, that won't work. Just do what my parents did: "you can stay up as late as you want if you are reading."
I still love a good book over 20 years later
If my own childhood is anything to judge by, I'm not sure requiring something of a child is a great way to instill a love of that thing.
If mine is, it is. Almost like everyone is different. But I think it's fine and good to require some things of children, as long as it's not over the top, they have some agency about parts of it (e.g. what to read), and have enough time for their own other interests too.
If the kid isn't remotely interested at the jump, you're just pushing a boulder up a hill and everyone is getting angry about it.
Parenting is more like boxing than putting together Legos. Have a plan, absolutely have a plan, but know who you're dealing with. There are other activities that are enriching that aren't reading. You don't get to pick who your kid is anymore than they get to pick who their parents are.
if the child isnt interested at the jump, you as the parent messed up by not introducing reading early enough.
All you gotta do is bake story time into the bedtime routine starting shortly after they sleep through the night. As a baby. Read some Dr. Suess to your baby and make em laugh as you do so.
I read to my son every night, until he was about 8, then he didnt want to be read to anymore.. and started reading on his own.
No you cant tell a ten year old what to be interested in, or much past 6, be able to direct which books as much, but toddlers will follow your lead more or less, as you establish routines, keep the screen from thier face, and these routines will carry into the later kid years.
Of course everyone is different; in fact, that is kind of the essence of my point.
Brace yourself. It's a pain in the ass!
We have limited screen time for our kids on weekdays. Probably not as limited as it should be, but enough to cause constant grief. Holy shit the arguments and raging it's caused! We've been called nazis, prison guards, micromanagers, helicopter parents, you name it. So for our limited screen policy and implementation of it. I've had to get a bit of drywall repaired because one of them got so worked up he kicked the wall and broke it.
I hope some day they appreciate we were only doing it for their own benefit. But who the fuck knows.
sounds like junkies that didn't get their fix...
They all are. Once they go to school you can't really stop friends from sharing their devices to give the dopamine hits, or even the school itself providing not properly locked down devices.
Yikes. Screens (really not screens but social media and corpo net in general) are so damn addictive and terrible for all of us.
No kids here but I'd have a hard time ever letting them have anything that isnt pre 2008 tech and zero internet until theyre maybe 13... Still too young. Limited net would be OK. kids at school are still gonna ruin it though.
Let them have screen time but restrict it to gophernet or terminal only 😁
Now imagine how bad itll be in the future when kids are utterly addicted to their chatbot gfs/friends and then need to pay a $200 a month sub to keep them. Wild .
Let them have screen time but restrict it to gophernet or terminal only 😁
I'm imagining my kids facing a terminal window completely lost now. Lol.
I imagine anyone under 40 who isnt a supernerd would be lol. Its a great skill to have though.
Something interesting happened where I worked a little while ago. We had a phone in the lost and found that stayed there for, I kid you not, a whole month. The whole time I was like, how did somebody not realize they lost their phone right away?
Turns out it belonged to a kid whose parents limited their screen time on that particular device anyway, and they hadn't realized it was missing for a whole month.
It’s tough, but doable.
We make sure to visit our public library every couple of weeks to keep at least 8-10 books in the house or a little plastic bin in the car. Eventually the kids get curious, flip through the pages, and then over time start reading on their own.
You can do it (when the time comes)!
My parents did not allow a TV in our home until I was 8 or maybe 9. And even then I was only allowed very short viewing times during the week days and week-ends. I had books and comics, toys, board games and actual friends to play with, at home or, brace yourself, outside and without any adult supervision.
Sure that happened many decades ago, in the previous century. But it did not kill me, far from it.
edit: The key thing is that my parents too had other activities than watching a screen. Things I watched them doing and that I naturally tried to imitate.
The issue today, is that
friends to play with
is a luxury many don't have, at least not the way it was.
The other kids have devices, internet, etc and that's how they connect, so if you aren't meeting them there you're getting left out.
I don't say this to suggest you throw up your hands and give up, but it's a real complication to abstinence only plans.
My kid is just entering this stage and it's really tough.
is a luxury many don’t have, at least not the way it was.
I understand your point but friendship was never a luxury, it was the one thing that was available to all, no matter their social status and income.
What it was the repetition of actually meeting other people and spending enough time with them, learning to know them. That was also what helped us all learn to... socialize outside of the 'close family bound'.
At least as important, and obviously in such short supply nowadays, it also taught us to accept as something OK that our friends needed not to be perfect, and neither did we had to be perfect.
The exact things screens seem to have taken away from younger gens. A real shit deal for those kids, in my humble opinion
I think we agree! My point is that if all the other kids are burried in screens and social media, it doesn't matter if you/your kid are not, because the opportunity to connect is much smaller.
Sire there's other kids that aren't lost in screens, and that's great, but they are becoming a endangered species. As a parent it's hard to put your kid into that place.
I think education and parenting is the right solution, teaching kids how to use these things safely and effectively, but with limits. Movements like the no phones until 18 or whatever only work if everyone is bought in and that isn't going to happen.
I think we agree! My point is that if all the other kids are burried in screens and social media, it doesn’t matter if you/your kid are not, because the opportunity to connect is much smaller.
We do, 100%. This is indeed a real huge issue. But as an adult I still think each kid should be given the opportunity to get enough time off screen (not all the time, but at least as much as they spend in front of a screen), even doing that will have a real/true/painful cost for them, and for the parents. Those kids get one chance to be kids and to use that time to grew in an as... balanced/well rounded manner as possible (sorry, I'm not a native English speaker).
As for being one of the few kids doing that and being isolated... obviously, I have no ready-made solution, beside maybe looking for similarly worried parents (and they all should be) and to get to know one another, in order to let the kids spend time together.
There's a recent documentary about this - Toy Story 5 🙃
I lost touch with that franchise after the first movie, but I'll check it out. Sounds like an interesting concept to be working through in a movie setting.
The problem is see, especially in my area, is that all of the places I used to go as a kid have been paved over and developed. Now they're constantly bitching about all these kids on ebikes, as if we weren't tearing up the woods and farm fields on dirtbikes when we were their age. We built a world hostile to children and somehow expect the children to be content living in safety bubbles.
The problem is see, especially in my area, is that all of the places I used to go as a kid have been paved over and developed
We built a world hostile to children and somehow expect the children to be content living in safety bubbles.
100%. Which is a tragedy>. All of us adults, not just the parents, are ruining the kids childhood (and therefore deeply damaging their soon to be adulthood) under the umbrella of protecting their safety.
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