Did we? A third of teens haven't read a book in the last year. And we "binge" on TV shows now which didn't really exist in the 70s.
And it wasn't exactly exclusive to that either. Oh sure, TV often had a mix of shows which stopped you watching the same thing all day long, but:
1. There were still many, many people who watched TV nearly non stop, as their main form of entertainment every day.
2. Many TV shows ran marathons of a particular series for hours/days/weeks at various points of years.
Isn't that an improvement overall? You decide you want to watch something and you watch until it's finished. Media consumption habits in the TV era were much more passive and a lot of people would watch a show just because it was on. "There's nothing good on TV" used to be a common lamentation, I wouldn't be surprised if this generation is better at switching off entirely if there isn't content they want.
> A third of teens haven't read a book in the last year
I doubt it makes up the short fall, but does anyone know how well the audio book industry is doing since sites like Audible cropped up? I haven't read a book in some time now but I've listened to several because they have several advantages over reading and the only disadvantage I can think of would by for someone trying to improve their reading ability.
All that does come across in audio books though, you just miss the actual reading and imagining the voices.
Especially a lot of the "entrepreneur" or "productivity" books, where you have 80% padding because nobody wants to buy a 40 page book.
Strongly disagree. Reading a book requires patience and comfort with delayed gratification. Not only does it require it; I think it also develops it.
Watching a MOOK's is a huge commitment where reading a book covering the same material is fast. Video brings great value and can be more relaxing, but reading is generally just faster.
*No stats on this. They really don't have any features in their apps, so pretty confident here.