Ready-made activity for all

It’s a pastime which enriches the mind and soul while enveloping the reader with a consciousness of escapism that other forms of media simply cannot reach.

In fact, it would be just to declare reading to be just as important — if not more so — to the development of young people as eating healthy and taking part in regular exercise.

It is incredibly surprising, therefore, to learn that so few young people are taking part in this wondrous hobby outside of school.  

Indeed, a report published in 2014 by the Literary Trust found that a staggering 30 per cent of young people aged eight to 18 are limiting their reading time to a meagre once or twice per month, while a further 15 per cent admit to never or almost never reading at home.  

So who or what is to blame for this disinterest towards literature?

It’s easy to start pointing fingers at the neglect of parents, yet the same study which yielded these results is quick to dispute this trope, presenting us with the fact that: “When asked who had taught them to read, the majority of pupils indicated that it was their mother, followed by their teacher and father.”

The next port of call would be to blame the school system for failing to ensure that their students adopt proper reading habits yet, in fairness, an increasing number of schools are under such strenuous pressure these days from the likes Ofsted that they are overworking themselves to such a level that, realistically, they cannot do any more with the limited resources available to them.

With these factors under consideration a much simpler solution to the reading question arises: Perhaps the youth of the 21st century just aren’t that interested in prose as previous generations were.  

It seems likely that they wouldn’t be considering how much influence alternate forms of media hold over young people’s lives — with teens spending a reportedly whopping 27 hours online each week.  

Combine this notion with the hundreds of millions of pounds of investment which goes into the creation of other forms of entertainment such as film, television and videogames... and the humble novel certainly wanes on a superficial level.  

So it remains that perhaps the best way to get the youth of today nose deep into a good book is to ultimately adapt to the 21st century way of doing things.

To fight the proverbial fire with proverbial fire so to speak, submitting to the media lords in order to bring literature to the forefront of this generation’s attention.

A suitable first chapter to this endeavour would be to alter the portrayal and perceptions of bookworms in mainstream film and television.

Rather than perpetuating the tired stereotype of enthusiastic readers as the betas of the species whom struggle with even the most basic of social interactions, we should aim to reiterate the notion that reading is a perfectly sociably acceptable way of spending your spare time and those readers are in reality a diverse and charismatic bunch.

Another logical progression lies in the annals of advertising — an area that most booksellers are shamefully failing in — and simply letting the young people know what they’re missing out on by choosing to neglect such a powerful form of entertainment.

In fact, this aspect of the task shouldn’t even prove a challenge, considering that so many astoundingly popular TV shows and films, a Game of Thrones being but one example, started out life as very successful pieces of literature.

All in all, we should, however, refrain from being too condemnatory towards today’s youth, for there are a vast amount of avid young readers out there who regard their interest as a most cherished pastime, who greedily drink down a plethora of prose and gorge themselves on voluptuous feasts of non-fiction.

Those who read unadventurously, or perhaps choose to forgo the activity altogether, are well within their rights to do so.

Yet you cannot blame the bookworms for trying to gain some converts to their cult.

For the act of reading is after all such a very welcoming hobby.

by DANIEL HODGSON (21), from Rotherham, and a journalism student at Edinburgh’s Napier University