Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
But for all I think the article should have been better, I tend to agree with its premise and wonder why seniors don't read?
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The obvious answer is that it has to do with the internet competing for time.
Here's an example of how it is hard to draw conclusions: without the internet, it might be that right now I'd be reading a letter from our son in Germany, or writing back. Instead I'm writing this to you, in a PC browser window, and will likely video chat with David later today.
Less obvious, and highly dependent on how the time use study is conducted: A lot of medical care, in the U.S., winds up being focused in the last several years of life. My father died last year at age 93. Until I guess 91, he was a book reader (including, for a few years, on a basic Kindle). The last two or three years, perhaps due to moderate cognitive decline, he switched to TV. Some people would say that aggressive medical care extended his life. I'm not sure, but I know he had operations he didn't really recover from, and suspect this was a factor in not having the capacity to read. Maybe from 2003 to 2018 there were relevant changes in end of life medical care.
Conceivably, this could explain some of the difference, in the
Washington Post "Seniors watching more TV" chart, between men and women. Elderly men are much more likely to have cardio-vascular operations.
A lot depends on the details of how people really respond to the time use study. If it is asks for book reading, someone who reads newspapers and personal letters daily (both in great decline over the 2003 - 2018 period) might still decide to answer yes, I read.