What You Dont Know About Teens and Reading

When the National Endowment for the Arts released its Reading at Risk survey in 2004, it seemed like a death knell for teens. Reading, on the whole, was reportedly on the decline in the United States, and the problem was particularly serious among young people.

But here’s the good news: Many experts say reading is far from dead for adolescents, and is actually on the rise in many ways. It just depends on how you look at it.

“When people express concern about kids not reading, they don’t realize that they’re really reading all the time,” says Richard Beach, a professor in the literacy education program at the University of Minnesota. “It’s just what they’re reading and how they’re using media that’s changing. They’re on the forefront of an evolution in how reading is being redefined.”

Redefining Reading
Teenagers have become adept at using technologies to communicate with each other, find information, and connect with new people. Beach notes that teens now spend more time online (often while in front of the TV) than just watching TV—unlikely as it sounds, this could be a boon for the future of reading. “We need to think about how to build on their interests and strengths in technology,” he says.

Teachers, he notes, have begun to integrate blogging, wiki writing, podcasts, and writing in gaming-based simulations into their courses. And libraries are helping increase teen reading by stepping up their collections of print and online zines, manga, and comics. At St. Paul’s Highland Park Library, the use of games has prompted many kids to check out books that relate to what they’re playing, says librarian Marcus Lowry. Anime and manga, for example, have started a wave of interest in Japanese history and culture.

“If teens are excited about a game or anime, they’ll explore those subjects in different mediums like Web pages or books,” Lowry says. “The important thing is not to say books are better than games, or that they should be reading the classics.”

Developing programs that revolve around teens’ interests or address their lives in other ways bring them into libraries. The Highland branch has an anime book club, open book discussions, and a huge battle of the bands event. Brookdale Library started an International Teen Club for Hmong teenagers, and Southdale Library hosts a girls-only club.

Programs that are most successful are those that appeal to a small segment of teens, notes Christy Mulligan, Teen Central librarian at the new Minneapolis Central Library. When Mulligan wanted to start a group that appealed to younger male teens, she created a discussion club about comic books and drew eighteen kids, mostly boys. “You have to have your finger on the pulse of what they like,” she says. “You have to fill an interest in their lives.”

Creating teen-centered areas at libraries and getting advice from teen councils also helps drive kids to reading, Mulligan adds. “Literacy isn’t just about books anymore, and neither is the library,” she says. “We want teens to see the library as a place they can learn safe and smart ways of using technology, as well as just hang out and be part of the community.”

Minneapolis’s Teen Central has iPod docks, “graffiti walls,” and a collection chosen with much input from teenagers. Other libraries have also expanded or revamped their teen areas with more computers, beanbag chairs, comic books, games, and DVD stations. “In the past, public libraries didn’t respond well to teens,” says Hennepin County Library director Amy Ryan. “We served children and adults, and there was a black hole when it came to adolescents. But that is definitely changing.”

Making library rooms into areas where teens won’t be quieted and can lounge as long as they like is a start. It exposes them to more reading options—if they come in for graphic novels, they may leave with a bunch, but also a book or two. By involving teens in choosing books for collections, libraries are also able to stay on top of reading trends, like the rise of manga and graphic novels, and the immense popularity of girl-centered series like Gossip Girl or The Clique.

Making reading enjoyable and showing that libraries are welcoming spaces are particularly important because many teens have such heavy reading loads at school that they don’t often consider reading for pleasure, according to sixteen-year-old Kiera Cooman of St. Paul. “When you have so much to read already for school, people don’t get enthusiastic about adding to that,” she says. “For many people, reading has been made into a chore. They forget that it’s more exciting than it appears.”Challenges Still Ahead
Although technology, library involvement, and new programs are keeping reading alive for teens, there are certainly still challenges. Programs that appeal to teens can be popular, but they’re much more difficult to put together than those created for adults. Mulligan notes that it doesn’t work to just create a flyer for a club and hope that teens will come. “Recruiting takes effort,” she says. To that end, Mulligan visits classrooms at local high schools to talk about library programs and encourage kids to come to discussions.

Programs that falter are usually those that don’t have enough teen input, Lowry says. Sometimes librarians or teachers develop groups based on what they think teens should be reading, rather than what they actually like, and that professional filter can result in empty discussion tables. “Libraries need to let teens dream up and plan programs that fill their interests and needs,” Mulligan says.

There’s also the question of the apparent decline in teens who read literature. What impact could it have? “The key question is whether kids will still have the ability to enter a different literary world and engage in fantasy, so that they can learn to entertain alternative ways of thinking about their own lived worlds,” Beach says. “The capacity to suspend disbelief is so important.”

Teens tend to focus on the “immediate world,” Beach adds, in which they communicate in real time through instant messaging and read blogs that have been posted just hours before. Drawing them toward fantasy worlds through literature, in which they luxuriate in different realities, can be challenging.

“Reading online involves a different set of conventions—for example, the non-linear process of selecting buttons or links on a website as opposed to a left-to-right linear reading of print texts,” Beach says. “What we need to understand better is how to make connections between different kinds of text.”

Technology, useful for bringing kids into libraries and driving them to reading, can also be something of a barrier  to personal development, believes Anastasia Goodstein. She publishes Ypulse.com, a blog that tracks media trends among Generation Y. “With so many ways to stay connected to friends, the conversations never end,” she says. “A big part of being a teen is defining yourself through your peers, but before text messaging and e-mail you were forced to have some time alone and you’d have to define yourself in your own way, like writing in a journal or reading a book.”

Another major issue just beginning to be addressed is the gender gap in reading, with recent studies indicating that boys are much less likely to read for pleasure than girls. “Of course it makes sense that there’s a gap,” Ryan says. “We haven’t responded to boys on their own turf. You have women librarians and women teachers who like a certain kind of literature and can’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to read Anne of Green Gables.”

Libraries in the Hennepin County system are looking at what boys like to read, and trying to involve them in choosing more paperbacks, graphic novels, and magazines. One success is the Guys Read book clubs for pre-teen and teenage boys based on a program founded by author Jon Scieszka.

Despite the challenges of steering teens to reading, some believe the fresh focus will have a major impact on how kids read, write, and communicate. “Libraries are now packed with teens,” Ryan says. “It’s great to see.”