Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
Every generation has had numerous distractions. Before computers and video games, there was television. Before television, there was radio. Before radio, well, literacy wasn't even the norm. There are even less technological means of distractions. There were games of all forms: outdoors and indoors.
While it is true that there are more distractions today, it is only because the number of distractions had been cumulative. On the other hand, a lot of the old distractions have fallen by the wayside simply because they don't seem as appealing anymore. Think of things like card and board games: people can still play them (and still do play them), but they lack the appeal that they used to have. The same goes for things like sports: people can and do still play them, but they don't seem to be as popular these days (to play, watching them seems to be more popular than ever).
It is easy to notice what we have changed into. Sometimes it's easy to forget what we have changed from.
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We had plenty of distractions in the past. People still play cards, but not as much as they used to. I've looked at books of card games, and there are a lot of card games that have fallen by the wayside. And for solitaire, most people know one or two solitaire games, but there used to be a lot more. Boxing has declined, going out to the fights on Friday night used to be commonplace. Gambling used to me more commonplace than it is today.
There is a myth that in the past, everyone was an avid reader. But that looks more like selection bias, everyone I know may be a reader, but that's probably because I am more likely to associate with readers than with non-readers. Just because the past didn't have all of our passtimes doesn't mean they didn't have passtimes. Going out to a baseball game was more common in the past; you couldn't sit at home and watch the major leagues on TV, but you could watch the local minor league team. There were a lot more minor league teams than there are now.
And it can sometimes seem today that "nobody reads". There are a lot of people who don't read, but there are a lot of people who do. Harry Potter never would have become a phenomenon if young people didn't read. Reading may not be seen as the cool thing to do, but I don't know if it ever was. Consider the "wallflower" archetype who has his or her nose in a book. The "the life of the party" archetype doesn't have much time for books. The reader is often portrayed as someone who engages with fictional worlds rather than with the real one, either because of being lost in books (rather like Don Quixote) or they have retreated from reality due to rejection.
There are some people who look down on reading, and feel it is there place to make negative comments to readers. When I was reading at lunch, a coworker tried to tell me "men don't read". He was an idiot, and I ignored him. I would have to be truly weak and insecure to be swayed by this idiot attempting to challenge my masculinity.
I think one of the biggest influences on whether or not a child becomes a reader is having parents who read. Not just because of parents reading to children or encouraging reading (although these are important), but kids are observant. They can see whether their parents really value reading by seeing if the parents read. If the kids see that their parents want them to read, but their parents don't themselves read, they will observe that reading is like creamed spinach: something that is supposed to be good for you, but not something to enjoy. But if they see that their parents read, they will be more likely to see reading as something enjoyable than to see it as a chore.