[helterskelter]

I read an Economist article a few years ago that mentioned a literature professor at Columbia who said that most his undergrad freshmen students have never read a book cover to cover. Of those that have, their favorites were young adult fiction. Most of his students couldn't even focus on a single sonnet.

Apparently kids nowadays are having difficulty focusing on individual sentences, and a lot of them are just effectively illiterate. This just blows me away. I'm roughly your age and sometimes as a kid, during the summer, I'd do nothing for days but read nonstop, sunrise to sunset if I liked the book, and I knew a bunch of kids who would do the same thing. They weren't even what you'd call huge readers. It's just what you did if you were bored, or had an okay book with nothing else to do.

[madaxe_again]

Man, I literally never stopped as a kid - I always had a dogeared paperback on my person, in case a few spare minutes presented themselves to read.

And when I say “spare minutes” I mean… any time anyone wasn’t saying “put down that fucking book!” - I don’t know if the phenomenon of hiding a novel in a textbook and looking very very studious in class is even a thing any more.

These days I read almost exclusively on my phone, for much the same reason. If you flip open a paperback because you’re out for dinner and every other fucker isn’t talking but rather doomscrolling you look weird. If you give the appearance of also probably doing instragram or whatever, it’s socially acceptable.

Idk. I’m in my 40s now, I remember being mocked for being a bookworm when I was a kid, and I suppose this is just the same pattern - reading, knowing things, expanding your horizons - these things are not cool, and I don’t know if they ever were.

[drob518]

Yea, I take my iPad everywhere for the same reason. I’ve gone digital simply because our house already has bookshelves in every room and they are all full, so I literally find it difficult to buy physical books anymore. But I’m always reading, though I confess to reading more non-fiction than fiction these days.

[kelnos]

> as a kid, during the summer, I'd do nothing for days but read nonstop

Same! Our local library had a thing where you'd keep a list of all the books you read over the summer, and the week before school started you could turn the list in for a prize. I don't at all remember anything about the prizes, but I remember all the fun and joy I had reading the books and imagining other lives and worlds than my own.

[watwut]

Young adult fiction being the fing young adults read the most makes 100% sense.

[reverius42]

"Young adult" fiction is supposed to be for like 11-15 year olds. By high school I'd think you should be reading regular "adult" material. I think the curriculum generally agrees and assigns what we'd call adult literature in high school English.

[KptMarchewa]

Not only that. The strict adherence to things like ESRB ratings dumbs down today's kids.

I'm firmly in the camp that I am a better person today because things like parental controls did not really exist in the world when I was a kid, and I was playing GTA at like 10. While kids today at that age are forced to read, listen, watch or play dumbed down crap.

[watwut]

Young adult is NOT 11-15 year olds. By literally any definition.

> I think the curriculum generally agrees and assigns what we'd call adult literature in high school English.

The curriculum assigns what they should read to get overview of history of literature and general education. You are not meant to like most of it, you are meant to learn about the writer and period from it. The curriculum does not assigns what they "should" read for pleasure or like.

[mrob]

"Young adult" in this context is a publishing industry marketing tactic. It doesn't refer to actual adults. The target audience is mostly children who want to feel like they're getting away with something they're not supposed to.

[watwut]

Young adult literature is not "books for target range of 11-15". OP made that claim up to make it sound terrible that people who finished high school report liking to read books literally written for their age bracket. Official young adult age range is 13-18, which means literally high schoolers. And yes, they are already grown a lot, so those books frequently end up being popular among reading adults too.

I am from generation that read a lot. Huge bulk of what people, both adults and teenagers, read was something called "junk literature". It is fascinating how the "kids don't read for pleasure" panic instantly jumps into "it is horrible that when kids read for pleasure, they report liking books that are age appropriate and written so that their generation likes them".

[ndriscoll]

I remember plenty of "young adult" books in the school library in elementary and middle school in the 90s. e.g. I read A Wrinkle in Time in 4th grade, and The Giver was assigned in 7th. I think Hatchet may have been a choice of assigned reading in 5th. IIRC (and a quick search confirms) all of these were marketed as young adult. I've always thought of YA as targeted at roughly 9-12 years old. I remember thinking the term was patronizing when I was a kid.

[qwery]

It will rot your mind! It will make your eyes square! Stop doing something that I am not doing!

> "junk literature" ... fascinating ... panic

Yes. It's funny how old this meme is. It's about as old as novels, at least. It's fun reading centuries-old novels and finding references (well, thinly veiled protests) to the holier than thou impeccable paragons of virtue that have nothing better to do than hassle someone who wishes to read a book.

I suppose there's been some progress, if the fiction police have had to retreat to a limited subset of fiction to call sinful.

[qwery]

If by 'publishing industry marketing tactic' you mean a demographic, age range and to some extent (you can argue with this one) a genre, sure.

It doesn't refer to "actual adults", no: The age range is usually said to be 13..18.

The target audience is largely teenagers who want to read what they want to read.

What's your problem with "kids" reading books, anyway?

[MSFT_Edging]

Careful, if the YA fans could read, they'd be really upset at this.

[MichaelDickens]

What an odd insult to identify a group of people solely by the fact that they read (a particular subset of) books, and then say they can't read. The ability to read is one of the only things this group of people has in common!

[buellerbueller]

If you are a student at any Ivy League, I expect you to have read and, yes, found enjoyment in something more weighty than YA Lit.

[watwut]

How did you travelled from "this is their favorite book" to "they dont find enjoyment in anything else"? That is absurd.

Second, why is it shocking that smart educated Ivy League student would enjoy a book written for the young adult category? They read manga, superhero comicd, they watch same series on TV. Are you similarly shocked they watch football and their favorite movie is not from 1959?

[drob518]

Yep, it’s a crisis. We’re raising kids that are illiterate and frankly just dumb. You ever watch those YouTube videos where they interview college kids (who were actually accepted to a college!) and they can’t correctly answer who fought in the US Civil War and other basic knowledge questions? They don’t know the difference between continents and countries (e.g. Europe and a country within Europe). They can’t tell you who the Vice President is, never mind their Senators or their state governor. Clearly the education establishment has failed in a big way. And clearly, technology in the classroom has not improved anything.

[NickC25]

Worse yet, these people can vote.

And are completely susceptible to disinformation/misinformation campaigns.

[x1n13y84issmd42]

Having the gullible herd like this is the whole point of modern democracy.

[cucumber3732842]

"[as they grow up] these covid kids are gonna move like a wave through everything that requires literacy"

-some teacher from Brooklyn that I know