When was the last time you read a full book? Like, sat down with no distractions and read something you wanted to read. I don’t count all the books you were forced to read in high school. When I think of this question myself, I have read a full book recently. And have read quite a few in the past year. But that is because I have always been an avid reader. I love the feeling of getting to know characters and their story and feel like I am somewhere else. For me, it is a complete escape from reality. But I also know that many people could not say the same thing about themselves.
Reading has been on the decline for some time now. 57% of Americans don’t even read a single book in the span of one year. That feels crazy to me. But because of the rise of social media, I am also not surprised. We spend so much of our day on our phones, computers, and other devices that there just seems to be no time for actual books in our lives. That really got me thinking. Thus, my topic of reading in the 21st century was born. Social media has changed our attention spans so drastically that we are no longer able to engage in long excerpts of text without getting distracted by something. Whether it’s an ad or hyperlink within the post, a ping that came from our phone, or the feeling of impatience, we have been programmed to feel like we must always be shuffling from one task to another on our devices.
Because of the constant state of change social media is in, we are also in a constant state of change, just waiting to see what it will do next. This white paper takes a deep dive into how we have gotten to this and point we can start to pull ourselves out of the reading slump we have fallen into.
Check it out here:
Madison Vale 
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