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but the results may be a bit of a surprise.

The World Wide Web has had a negative impact but only on certain kinds of reading. Internet usage has had an impact on magazine and newspaper reading, as well as television watching. However, the time spent reading books for pleasure has stayed constant during between the two studies, although people are managing to read fewer books per year (from 24.4 books per year in 1991 to 16.6 books per year by 2005).

Although I don't have a scientific explanation for these trends, I'll speculate on the reasons for the decline in certain types of reading while others increase or stay constant over time. I think the reason lies in the realms of cost and distribution. Put simply, shorter writing is more easily and more freely available over the Internet than longer documents like novels or non-fiction books.

Look at any major magazine or periodical in North America and you'll find a common attribute: they all have an on-line presence. This is also true for many more specialized magazines with more limited readerships: many magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and other periodicals are now available on-line at any time for the cost of an Internet connection. In addition, many publications that were weekly or monthly in print form are updated much more frequently on the Web. You can get more up-to-date information via periodical Web sites than their printed versions. Blogs and on-line newsletters add to the availability of free information. The incentive to wait for, find, and purchase printed periodicals diminishes everyday.

Contrast this with books. There's no doubt that more and more books are being made available on-line, but the volume and variety of on-line books is relatively small and limited compared to their physical versions. Book publishers are not adopting on-line versions of their books with the same speed and gusto as the periodical publishers. And, unless the books are already in the public domain, publishers generally do not give away copies of new books for free. Just look at Scholastic and J. K. Rowling as an example of how book publishers are not only pursuing printed books, they are actively shunning on-line versions of their books. The Internet was abuzz with rumors and "leaks" of the text of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" prior to its publication, with the author asking the world-at-large to refrain from posting plot spoilers on the Internet.

There's no doubt that the way we read Web pages, and our on-line content preferences, have a major impact on what we read, how long we read, and how attentively we read when on-line. However, when you consider that much of the Web's content is words, people are still doing a heck of a lot of reading. The biggest change is the media which we read, whereby computer screens are capturing an increasingly large slice of total reading time.

Reading habits are changing. What we read and how we read is evolving over time. But are we reading less than we used to? I don't think so!

Learn more about this author, Mark Dykeman.
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