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90 A new research has revealed that the

91number of teenagers reading traditional

92 media for fun is dropping off at an alarming

93 rate. And it’s not because they’re too busy

94 watching TV.

95 The American Psychological Association

96 (APA) team, led by Professor Dr. Jean M.

97 Twenge, PhD, looked at data mainly taken

98 from a project called The Monitoring the

99 Future.

100 The Monitoring the Future (MTF)

101 project, widely known for some years as

102 the National High School Senior Survey, is a

103 repeated series of surveys in which the

104 same segments of the population are

105 presented with the same set of questions

106 over a period of years to see how answers

107 change over time. The survey began with

108 senior classes in 1975. In 1991, similar

109 surveys of nationally representative samples

110 of 8^th and 10th graders also started to be

111 conducted annually. In all, approximately

112 50,000 students in about 420 public and

113 private secondary schools are surveyed

114 annually.

115 To reach their conclusions, these

116 researchers looked at the survey results

117 from 1975 to 2016, which includes

118 responses from more than one million

119 survey participants. They found that less

120 than 20% of US teens now report reading

121 traditional print media daily for pleasure.

122 While 60% of 12^th graders said they read a

123 book or magazine almost every day in the

124 late 1970s, just 16% reported daily reading

125 in 2016. And although 33% of 10th graders

126 said they read a newspaper almost every

127 day in the 1990s, by 2016, this number had

128 dropped to just 2%. However, more than

129 80% of teens reported using social media

130 every day.

131 In contrast, digital media use has increased

132 substantially in recent years, with 12^th

133 graders spending two hours per day on the

134 Internet during their spare time in 2016,

135 compared to one hour per day back in 2006.

136 As of the mid-2010s, the average

137 American 12th grader reported spending

138 about six hours per day using digital

138 media — roughly two hours each texting,

139 surfing the internet and using social

140 media. In comparison, 10^th graders

141 reported an average of five hours of use

142 per day, while 8^th graders reported an

143 average of four hours per day. "Time on

144 digital media has displaced time once spent

145 enjoying a book or watching TV", said

146 Twenge.

147 However, with the rise of e-books and digital

148 devices, the researchers were surprised to

149 find that reading had dropped so steeply.

150 "It's so convenient to read books and

151 magazines on electronic devices like tablets.

152 There's no more going to the mailbox or the

153 bookstore – you just download the magazine

154 issue or book and start reading. Yet reading

155 has still declined precipitously," said

156 Twenge.

157 Even time spent watching television and

158 movies has declined, although not as

159 drastically. In the 1990s, 22% of 8th graders

160 reported watching five or more hours of

161 television per day compared to just 13% in

162 2016. Twenge was also surprised that the

163 number of teens going to the movie theater

164 declined only recently, adding that the rise

165 in streaming sites seems to be the cause.

_{Compiled from: http://time.com/5371053/teenagers-bookssocial-media/ & https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/technews/2018/08/22/teens-are-spending-more-time-on-socialmedia-and-less-time-reading-finds-new-research/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonitoringtheFuture}

Dr. Twenge’s team