There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading | Comment is free | The Guardian

Response, Sunil Iyengar and Mark Bauerlein: There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading | Comment is free | The Guardian: "Johnson denies there is any evidence of damage linked with excessive viewing and surfing. Yet sufficient data has led the American Academy of Pediatrics to advise parents to keep children's rooms free of electronic media. Reading is at risk, but so are the minds of the young; we need a more critical view of their digital environment and its omnipresent allure. Now is the time for educators and intellectuals to produce sound empirical studies of the risks and benefits of electronic media."

Interesting response to last week's Guardian article on The Dawn of the Digital Natives. I wonder why the claim for 'Now is the time...' though? Why now? Why empirical studies? What would the real impact be of finding out these results since one common cry is that parents can't and don't control their children's exposure to media anyway? Do we accept that the world has changed and that we live in a state of connectedness, whatever that may bring? Do we resist and step back while the world carries on changing anyway?

Yes, it's good to understand the impact of the changes around us... but panic at the developments the digital age holds? No. There's good and bad in everything, isn't there? TV is said to have seen off books... but people still read, Amazon thrives and libraries do business. The publishing of the written word was said to have changed the nature of childhood (Postman, 1995) ... but we still remember our 'idyllic' childhoods despite the fact that they were permeated with literature of one form or another. We use the internet, are connected via mobile phones, social networks, online, offline, face-to-face, alone, together... but it's only the 'minds of the young' who are at risk?? Pespective people. Put it in perspective before you wind yourselves up into a frenzy and risk waking up from the panic to find the world has changed and the point at which you could have affected that change has gone... :o)