Local View: Students weren’t reading anyway then the virus came
From the column: Call it the out-smartphone if it has the power to distract us when it’s not even in the same room.
Written By:
Aaron R. Boyson | 8:00 am, Jan. 17, 2021 ×
From 2010 to 2018, leisure reading dropped from 20 minutes to 16 minutes per day. You know, like reading the Opinion section of a newspaper. Take out the elderly, and it drops to six minutes per day less than an hour a week.
Nobody wants more 2020 drama, but one of the worst things about last year went basically unnoticed. It was detailed in a book, not even a new book. It was the second edition of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize when it was released a decade ago. The book diagnosed a new normal, whereby the internet splays attention, fractures thinking, and reconstitutes reading.