Has Technology killed reading books in Younger Generation?

“New Technology is common, new thinking is rare”, said Sir Peter Blake. Side by side one of the eminent novelist John Green wrote a beautiful line about reading, “Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with his weird evangelic zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world with never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book”. The two contradictory concepts technology and reading books are the talks of the town of the present time because tech at one point brought advancement, prosperity, and ease in every domain of life. While its ill-use is changing the behavior of people, inviting hundreds of health problems and above all mental illnesses. Hence, technology killed reading should be a myth because it would be unfair to blame technological advancements besides enjoying its fruits from small devices at our homes to air crafts in the sky. The profound effects of digital tech over conventional reading are prevailing and in the reach of every individual. But here is a point to ponder that Has Technology killed reading books or not? There upon, certain areas should be highlighted to undermine perception for accusing technology of cultural change in reading books.

Does Format matters?

Before going deep into the format definition of a book should be clear, and a good deal of services are striving to remove the gap between a printed and digital book. Like Bookindy a tech startup in London has started doing work through its technology to encourage people to purchase from the bookshops. Likewise, you might have experienced this during a search for a book on Amazon a pop up appears asking about the cost of that similar book at your nearest bookseller’s shop. Accordingly, it is just the format of a book that has been changed from physical to digital otherwise no harm has ever been done to reading books by Technology.

Prints Fight Back

It is valid to accept that book sales are massively hit because of the cultural shift of people from physical to digital books at knock-down prices. Therefore, booksellers and publishers consider Amazon’s Kindle as their biggest threat. But this doesn’t mean that the era of printed books is over now rather, it still has a large market surviving alongside its newly rich cousin e-book. Like there is a rough estimation from the year 2014 that £1.7bn has spent on printed books as compared to £393m on e-books in the UK.

Social Media a Biggest Distraction

With a smartphone in your palm, everything is at your doorstep and in a second this convenient device can download your favorite book. But the ill side is now electronic books are competed by the games and various social media sites said by Laura Summers Book machines co-founder. In this situation still, it is up to the choice of a person whether he uses this tech for his favor or he distracts himself because this is beyond the capacity of technology to compel someone for reading books. Still, people are working in this domain as a new startup Rook in London is providing free downloads access to books at various internet hotspots. Their intention is entrapping people so they purchase books after they get hook up with reading. Again this is a technology and is not distracting reading books rather is striving from various corners so that book reading wouldn’t extinct.

Virtual Reading is not healthy

The 21^st century is a time of development with technology penetrating us everywhere and screens are the fundamental ingredient of our everyday life. In fact, we are completely glued to such devices for most of our time. The controversial hot topic of recent times is that screens are pulling us away from our cultural reading habits which are keenly defended by youngsters saying e-book is adding value to their reading time. Wherefore, taking into consideration the negative effects of the screen on health virtual reading has declared as unhealthy, straining eyes, disturbing sleep patterns, and ultimately reducing efficiency.

Finally, summing it up Technology itself is not harmful rather sometimes its excessive and continuous use causes unhealthy problems. Consequently, technology has not killed reading books rather is opening a new way for its growth beyond and above its physical confines.