Reading has always been a niche hobby and in the 80s/90s they were saying the same thing about TV. Reading is not exactly social and provides little in the way of tangible gains, most people are pragmatists. I have been an avid reader going on 40 years now and have put in the time read and reread until I understood every little nook and cranny of many of those big difficult novels and I have nothing to show for that, sure I occasionally get to discuss them and show off but it is not like they improved my life in any real sense. Tik-Tok is at least a social endeavor and I don't believe that the people who spend 6 hours a day on it would replace that time with reading if the internet died, they would replace it with other social activities like going out to bars.
I think the point is that they are unable to focus long enough to read. Some of my fondest childhood and young adult memories are disappearing into a book for hours and sometimes days. I've tried to get back to that and have failed.
My point is that it serves no practical purpose and that is why you and others have issues with it. You spend two weeks reading a book and you can not share that with others because most will not read it. You spend an hour watching TV or youtube or Tik-Tok and you have a reasonable chance others you know have watched what you watched and even if they didn't they are likely to watch it based on your recommendation since the time required is minimal, it can be shared with most anyone.
The vast majority of people are social and pragmatic, reading is solitary and not practical. I was in my well into my teens before I met other readers who read books of the ilk that I read and even then we might have a few books a year we all have read and can discuss, it is largely a solitary endeavor. I grew up with the internet and TV and BBSes and so did my friends who are readers, we still read. If I am to believe articles like this I also have to believe that we are all exceptional people who ultimately fail to meet up to our exceptionalism which I find unlikely but perhaps I am just validating my own failures.
Even in this connected world it is impossible to find people who have read much the same stuff I have, at best a couple dozen books and most of those will have been read so long ago they can not be discussed on any worthwhile level, that is not enough to sustain any sort of relationship through a shared passion for reading. Few people want to put dozens of hours into something they can not share with the people they know and that is a requirement of reading unless you want to read only what is popular and ignore your own interests. Cooking, programming, woodworking, music, art, most if not all other hobbies result in something that is easy to share with the people in your life even if they are across the world, you can share a recipe or a photo or a recording or a plan. With reading you read the book then put it on the shelf and maybe a few times in your lifetime you will get to discuss it with someone.
At least 90% of the books I have read I have never discussed with anyone beyond a superficial level, the equivalent of the back page blurb. Thousands of hours of my life I will never be able to share with anyone. Reading is unlikely ever to become a popular past time among a species who largely wants to share even their sleeping time with someone else.
We seem to be talking past each other. The professor was talking about a decline in the ability and/or willingness to read. Whether one reads for pleasure or not, the inability to read and process information is a problem.
Perhaps we differ on the amount of experiences that need to be shared. I don't talk about most of the things I enjoy doing. I would like to get back to long stretches of reading whether I discuss the books with anyone or not.
I first got email and Usenet access in the early '80s with the full www shortly thereafter. My attention span was sort of ok before but has been shattered ever since. I would love to be able to focus on a book but struggle. I feel for the current crop who are dealing with so much more due to the 24/7 stimuli and worse, unrealistic expectations.
