NEW YORK – The reading of books is on the decline in America, despite Harry Potter and the best efforts of Oprah Winfrey.
A report released Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts says the number of non-reading adults increased by more than 17 million between 1992 and 2002.
Only 47 percent of American adults read “literature” (poems, plays, narrative fiction) in 2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. Those reading any book at all in 2002 fell to 57 percent, down from 61 percent.
NEA chairman Dana Gioia, himself a poet, called the findings shocking and a reason for grave concern.
“We have a lot of functionally literate people who are no longer engaged readers,” Gioia said. “This isn’t a case of ‘Johnny Can’t Read,’ but ‘Johnny Won’t Read.’”
The likely culprits, according to the report: television, movies and the Internet.
“I think what we’re seeing is an enormous cultural shift from print media to electronic media, and the unintended consequences of that shift,” Gioia said.
The decline came despite the creation of Oprah’s book club in 1996 and the Harry Potter craze that began in the late 1990s among kids and adults alike. Reading fell even as Barnes &Noble boasted that its superstore empire was expanding the book market.
In 1992, 72.6 million adults in the United States did not read a book. By 2002, that figure had increased to 89.9 million, the NEA said.
The drop in reading was widespread: among men and women, young and old, black and white, college graduates and high school dropouts. The numbers were especially poor among adult men, of whom only 38 percent read literature, and Hispanics overall, for whom the percentage was 26.5.
The decline was especially great among the youngest people surveyed, ages 18 to 24. Only 43 percent had read any literature in 2002, down from 53 percent in 1992.
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