THE DYING CULTURE OF

READING

Prepared for
Ma’am Sara Sehraz

Prepared by
Maimoona Noor
(SP19-BSE-064)

Submitted On
November 7th, 2019

Department of computer science and information technology

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Executive Summary:

The aim of this report was to determine the reasons behind the decrease in reading habits of the

students of today's generation. In order to make a compelling argument, a survey among

students and study the results that came from it while comparing it to a bigger study as a source

of back up information. The study was able to determine what other studies have already shown

to be evident and that is the main reason reading habits among students has been decreasing

lately is due to the emergence and common use of smart phones and tablet. The studies indicated

that students these days are not interested in reading for leisure and instead are more interested

in doing other activities in their free time. The results were according to what is predicted. The

recommendations would enable the students to take more interest in reading books and to.

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1 Contents
1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 4
1.1 Background information ............................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Statement of the problem/purpose ................................................................................................ 5
1.2.1 Objectives of this study: ........................................................................................................ 5
1.3 Significance of the study ............................................................................................................... 7
1.4 Scope of Study .............................................................................................................................. 7
1.5 Limitations of the study ................................................................................................................ 7
2 Review of Related Literature ................................................................................................................ 7
3 Methods of Study .................................................................................................................................. 8
4 Results and Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 8
5 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 13
6 Recommendations ............................................................................................................................... 13
7 References ........................................................................................................................................... 14
8 Appendices.......................................................................................................................................... 15

Table of Figures
Figure 1 ....................................................................................................................................................... 10
Figure 2 ....................................................................................................................................................... 11
Figure 3 ....................................................................................................................................................... 12
Figure 4 ....................................................................................................................................................... 16

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1 Introduction:

Book reading has been considered as one of the best ways for a student to learn about different

aspects and subjects of life. Even in cases where someone is reading just for pleasure, they have

shown better academic performance as compared to people who do not read books for pleasure

(National Endowment of the arts, November 2007).

Reading among adolescents is very necessary for a child’s development and helps them in

language development (David Dickinson, 2011).

Hence, book reading has very good effect on a child’s upbringing and diminishing practice of

this can have a negative effect on kids growing up, investigating this occurrence might help us

find out the solution for this problem.

University students are nowadays, extremely busy reading their course books and doing their

assignments and in the spare time they are busy on their mobile phones using social media and

stuff. Therefore, a huge decline of reading habits among youth is increasing.

Therefore, the dying culture of reading is disheartening because reading could benefit a person

for life time. In today’s age of information, knowledge is easily accessible to a person through

various electronic devices. The rise of these machines has made distractions for students and it

made a common hobby that is book reading less common. This is very disappointing as book

reading is very beneficial for a person rather than spending time on computers and mobiles.

1.1 Background information:

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Benefits of reading habits are plenty and it’s a habit that is a tunnel to a person’s success in life.

It is essential to investigate what is causing a drop in something like book reading.Before the

mainstream use of smart phones, tablets and laptops, book reading used to be one of the most

common hobbies as well as one of the only ways to gain knowledge. This practice has been

diminishing for a while. This trend has a correlation with emergence of smart phones and

tablets as well as computers in common households as before the advent of these electronic

device’s books were the only medium to gather knowledge. Some other factors might include

such as decreased attention span of children of this generation as well as just gradual disinterest

in book reading by students in general as they would rather learn through a teacher or through

their own experiences.

1.2 Statement of the problem/purpose:

Decrease in book reading among students. This gradual decrease in book reading might have

negative impact on students of this generation. We shall investigate as to what is exactly causing

it and how to counteract this problem.

1.2.1 Objectives of this study:

● Determine the factors that are causing the decrease in book reading among
students.

● Methods to counteract these factors.

The following questions were generated to guide the research:

● How common is reading in general among students in a university

academic setting through books?

● How can we increase this habit of book reading, what incentives should we

take to encourage it?

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● How can we counteract whatever is interfering with the book reading among
students?

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1.3 Significance of the study:

This study would help us figure out whether we are going into a new age where the need

of books has been eliminated by the emergence of electronic devices such as tablets and smart

phones which can be considered as the new medium for gaining knowledge or diminishing

students’ interest in reading.

1.4 Scope of Study:

The scope of this study is about the dying culture of reading among student. How

reading habits play important role in the life of students. This study was limited to the reading

of books among students and to identify the various things that helps to promote good reading

among students. This study was restricted to the students of Comsats University Islamabad

only.

1.5 Limitations of the study:

As with all research programs, there is always a chance of inaccuracy in data. In order to

minimize this sort of inaccuracy we can try a more secure way of gaining data that would

guarantee us that the data we gained is accurate.

2 Review of Related Literature:

According to Palani (2012), reading habit is an extremely important aspect of creating a

well-educated society. Before the invention of television and mobile phones, the young and old

peoples found enough time to read books.

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Bashir and Mattoo (2012)’s findings tell us that reading habits are powerful weapon for the

students to be proficient in life. He estimated that reading habits determine the academic

achievements of students to expand.

Sangkaeo (1999) stated that reading habit in students is stopped by many factors such as

advancement in technology which resulted in people spend more time watching television

instead of book reading.

3 Methods of Study:
The study shall consist of one survey, comprising of college and university students. The

main questions asked in it are the following:

● Whether they read books for pleasure?

● How many hours they spend on leisure book reading or just book reading in general per

week?

● What is the type of the books they are reading, whether they are fictional or nonfictional?

● The survey shall ask the participants what kind of books they think benefit them the most

long-term.

4 Results and Discussion:

After taking the survey it was found that majority of the people do not read books. Most

of the students indicate their motivation for leisure readings, majority of the students read

books to get better grades in examination. Most of the students also read non-study books

to improve their language skills and only a limited number of the students were reading

for relaxation.

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 Frequency

Reasons Most of the Sometimes Rarely

Time
For better grades in tests and examination (62.0%) (26.6%) (11.4%)

For improving my language skills (61.4%) (27.9%) (10.7%)

For learning new things (45.5%) (43.4%) (11.1%)

Reading is my hobby (38.2%) (31.8%) (30.0%)

For relaxing (41.4%) (39.3%) (19.3%)

The participating people were asked how frequently they do leisure reading. It was found that

most of the people read for at least less than one hour. Some o said that they read for fun almost

daily. It appeared that boys were less avid readers than girls. As compared to 57 percent girls,

only 43 percent of the boys were reading books.

The children were asked to indicate from where they get books for their leisure reading. It was
found that 34 percent of the children get their books from public libraries. Another 32 percent of
the children mentioned that they buy their books from bookstores. One-quarter of the children said

that they borrow books from their school library.

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Figure 1

The students were asked to indicate where they often read their leisure materials. It was found

that majority (64%) of the students preferred doing their fun reading at home. Another 22 percent

of the students do their leisure reading in school, while 5 percent of the students said that they

read while travelling on the buses or in cars. Only 4 percent of the students reported doing their

leisure reading in public libraries.

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Figure 2

Only a few people buy book of itself because in today’s world book reading is not very popular

and people are more interested in social media and other stuff. Student waste most of their time

on social media and WhatsApp due to which book reading becomes less.

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 st nd rd
Activity 1 Choice 2 Choice 3 Choice Total
Playing on computer 19% 20% 21% 60%
or the Internet

Hobbies and Sports 26% 15% 15% 56%

Reading 17% 16% 10% 43%

Watching TV 13% 14% 15% 42%

Playing or going out 8 17% 16% 41%%

Listening music 10% 15% 13% 38%

Figure 3
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5 Conclusion

On the basis of the findings we were able to reach several conclusions regarding the dying

culture of reading. The findings show that the habit of book reading has shrunk.Nowadays

people spend more time using smart phone or tablets, watching TV than to read a book. People

do not read books for leisure and they spend less than one hour a week reading books.

From this study, it can be concluded that use of social media has badly affected the habit of

reading and it was one of the main reasons of the dying culture of reading among students.

Students should be encouraged to visit the library and the habit of book reading should be

developed among students.

6 Recommendations

Through this survey it is quite clear that the main reason that the people these days do not read
books as much as they did before is due to the rise of smart phones and tablets. People these days
spend way too much time in these electronic devices playing games or checking their social
media status every second of their day. If the goal is to spend more time reading books instead of
playing games all the day then we should first time to cut back on our screen-on time with smart
phones. To accomplish this many ways have been discovered that have been proven to be
effective. Some of them are following:

● We can take the help of smart phone itself to decrease our screen-on time with

it, for this we can download some apps that reminds us that how much time you are

spending on your phone and advise you to take a break. These applications have proven

to be very successful, some of them are “ïn moment” and “freedom”.

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 ● We can try to make a habit of not using smart phones for not more than 3 hours
a day. About 40% of people claim to use their smart phones for more than 3 hours a day
.
● We should stop using our smart phones before going to bed. Studies have shown

that using smart phones right before going to bed is not good as it delays sleep.

We should also learn how to increase our book reading time. For that purpose, some of the

suggestions are given below.

● One simple way, if you already read books, is to practice speed reading. This

would enable you to become more efficient.

● You can read books on your electronic devices such as a smartphone or a

tablet. You can read them anywhere you want.

● Join a book reading club is a great way to make a habit of reading more books.

● Getting a card library card is a good way to keep up with your reading habits a it

is much cheaper and you can read as many of them as you like

7 References

● Bashir, I.& Mattoo, N. H. (2012). A Study on Study Habits and Academic

Performance Among Adolescents (14-19) years. International Journal of Social Science
Tomorrow, Vol1,1-5.
● Micheal Owusu-Acheaw. (2014). Reading Habits Among Students and its
Effect on Academic Performance: A Study of Students of Koforidua Polytechnic,1-23.
● Issa, A. O. Aliyu, M. B.Akangbe, R. B. & Adedeji, A. F. (2012). Reading
Interest and Habits of the Federal Polytechnic Students. International Journal of
Learning & Development, Vol2. Retrieved from 470-486

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 ● Palani, K. K. (2012). Promising Reading Habits and Creating Literate Social.
International Reference Research Journal ,3(2), 91.
● National Endowment for the arts. (2007). A Survey of Literary Reading in
America,9-40 David K. Dickinson. (2011). How Reading Books Fosters Language
Development around the World, 1-6.
● Somsong Sangkaeo. (1999). Reading habit promotion in ASEAN libraries.
Retrieved from http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/091-114e.htm
● Shabi, I.N., & Udofia, E.P. (2009). Role of the school library in promoting
reading culture in Nigeria. International Journals of Research in Education,6(1-2):
259-269.

8 Appendices
Due to the fact that this report does not contain any complex terminologies or
mechanisms, the appendices shall talk about what questions were asked during survey
and and the final responses to those questions. Some of the questions taken are mentioned
below.

. Do you ever read books for leisure?

o Yes
o No
o Maybe

This question was one of the defining questions of the whole survey. The collected data showed

that most participants almost never read books for leisure.

What kind of books do you usually read?

If you read fictional books what kind of fictional books do you read?

If you read nonfiction books what kind of non fictional books do you usually read?

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The next following questions and this one was designed to determine what the participants liked

to read in their past time. Nonfiction books are books based on real life events while fiction

books are usually not true and at best inspired from real life. Most of them read fiction because

as they are usually more interested than nonfiction.

Figure 4

What do you do in your free time?

o Yes
o No
o Maybe
The response to this question was really disappointing students spend most of their time using

their smart phones and in fact today's technology is the main reason of dying culture of reading

How many hours do you spend reading books per week?

Again, another disappointing response, the survey showed that students spend less than an hour

per week reading for pleasure.

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