Kids and Digital Reading

scholastic report — Click this graphic to read the full report.

This week the Scholastic Corporation published a report describing the views of children and their families about reading, and it is worth taking the time to read.

Based on responses from 1045 children and their parents, the survey aimed to discover thoughts about digital activities and reading habits in today’s virtual world. The report is chock full of amazing graphs that depict the views and thoughts of young readers as well as parents’ responses to similar questions. Many of these graphs break the children’s answers by age group.

Today’s blog post reports on the first section of the report — Reading Books in the Digital Age. Tomorrow I’ll provide highlights from the other two sections.

Interesting Opinions from Kids

Kids report that reading books for fun has decreased while a digital media activities have increased.
39% of children reported that the information they find online is always correct (page 12).
25% of young respondents have read a book on a digital device (page 14).
57% of children want to read a book on a digital device (page 15).
39% of young respondents said that they might read more if they had greater access to eBooks (page 16).
66% percent of children said they will always want to read books printed on paper even if eBooks are available (page 18).

Key Observations from their Parents

56% percent of parents worry that digital activities may be diverting kids from reading for fun (page 8).
78%of parents selected one electronic device that they would like to see their child give up for a week of two (page 9).
84% of parents understand that their children need to know how to handle farm more information today than the parents did at the same ages (page 11).
6% of parents own a digital reading device and 16% say they plan to purchase one sometime in the next year (page 17).

Other Media Stories About the Scholastic Report