Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesĬlearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even, entails some engagement with text.Ī NEW GENERATION Nadia Konyk, 15, has a small book collection but prefers reading online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.Īt least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.Įven accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.Īs teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.īut others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”Ĭhildren like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But she spends most of her time on or, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.Ī slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest. BEREA, Ohio Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing.
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