Gen Z Turns To Physical Books and Libraries (theguardian.com) 89
Gen Z is reviving the trend of reading physical books over digital ones, with a notable increase in library visits and book purchases, as evidenced by celebrities like Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner promoting literature and book clubs. The Guardian reports: This week the 22-year-old model Kaia Gerber launched her own book club, Library Science. Gerber, who this month appears on the cover of British Vogue alongside her supermodel mum, Cindy Crawford, describes it as "a platform for sharing books, featuring new writers, hosting conversations with artists we admire -- and continuing to build a community of people who are as excited about literature as I am." "Books have always been the great love of my life," she added. "Reading is so sexy."
Gerber isn't alone. Last year in the UK 669m physical books were sold, the highest overall level ever recorded. Research from Nielsen BookData highlights that it is print books that gen Z favour, accounting for 80% of purchases from November 2021 to 2022. Libraries are also reporting an uptick in gen Z users who favour their quiet over noisy coffee shops. In the UK in-person visits are up 71%. While the BookTok charts -- a subsection of TikTok where avid readers post recommendations -- are regularly topped by fantasy and romance titles from authors such as Colleen Hoover, gen Z are reading a diverse range of genres. [...]
"Overall we are seeing a move towards escapism through the rise in speculative fiction, romance and fantasy, but I think it would be a mistake to homogenise gen Z and say they're reading lighter," says the author and literary agent Abigail Bergstrom. "With the oversaturation and noise of the wild west digital landscape, they are also demanding higher standards, especially when it comes to the authority and expertise of a writer on a particular subject."
Gerber isn't alone. Last year in the UK 669m physical books were sold, the highest overall level ever recorded. Research from Nielsen BookData highlights that it is print books that gen Z favour, accounting for 80% of purchases from November 2021 to 2022. Libraries are also reporting an uptick in gen Z users who favour their quiet over noisy coffee shops. In the UK in-person visits are up 71%. While the BookTok charts -- a subsection of TikTok where avid readers post recommendations -- are regularly topped by fantasy and romance titles from authors such as Colleen Hoover, gen Z are reading a diverse range of genres. [...]
"Overall we are seeing a move towards escapism through the rise in speculative fiction, romance and fantasy, but I think it would be a mistake to homogenise gen Z and say they're reading lighter," says the author and literary agent Abigail Bergstrom. "With the oversaturation and noise of the wild west digital landscape, they are also demanding higher standards, especially when it comes to the authority and expertise of a writer on a particular subject."
Tired of this generation thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting tired of this generation thing which seems to be a way to break down the complexities of growing up and growing old into nice categories.
Newsflash: People change as they get older.
I'm Gen X and when I was a teenager at school some kids liked nothing except sitting down in front of a games machine for hours on end listening to their walkman and doing little else. Others were quite happy burying themselves in a book, and others in turn couldn't wait for the first chance to get outside with a ball and a small minority thought it was their mission to stick it to the man in whatever form.
You can't divide people in Boomer, Gen X, millenial, Gen Z, whatever, everyone is different. Yes there may be overarching things that are more common to one generation than another but they pale into insignificance compared to the differences between individuals within those generations.
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I'm getting tired of this generation thing
[...]
I'm Gen X and when I was a teenager...
I thought you were tired of this generation thing?
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Its called setting the scene.
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The invisible pigeonholing committee wants to have a word with you.
Raises a flap (Score:2)
There is no true pigeon.
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Then don't read the news. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm getting tired of this generation thing which seems to be a way to break down the complexities of growing up and growing old into nice categories.
Welcome to the wonderful world of statistical analysis where categorization is the entire point.
Newsflash: People change as they get older.
And we have the statistics to prove it!
You can't divide people in Boomer, Gen X, millenial, Gen Z, whatever,
That's statistically incorrect. :)
Yes there may be overarching things that are more common to one generation than another
Oh, so now you're on board with statistics. Hmm... probably could have predicted that with a statistical analysis of Slashdot readers.
Prove the value of statistics in media. (Score:2)
And yet I wonder how much statistical analysis would be needed to prove how statistics feeds the ongoing problem of distracting and dividing the populous, with articles purposely written to point fingers. For fucking clickbait profit of course.
Show me the statistics on that kind of behavior and then perhaps we can talk about how ‘valued’ statistics like this really are.
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then perhaps we can talk about how ‘valued’ statistics like this really are.
I never claimed they were "valued". I only ever implied they were in the news.
Re: Then don't read the news. (Score:1)
There are more differences between people of the same generation than between generations. There are only a few real divides between recent generations: boomers rejecting their parents values, and millenials are financially worse off than generations before them.
Re:Tired of this generation thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes but there are also trends. On the whole people who are gen Z now are going to have on average a different set of habits, foibles and etc when they are in their 60s+ than boomers.
On average.
There are both boomers and gen-z's across the spectrum, but that doesn't disprove the existence of statistical differences. Assuming TFS is moderately sound, it won't tell you if any particular Gen-Zer or Boomer is likely to be found in a library, but it will tell you whether the people found in a library will skew older ot younger than the general demographic of the ares.
People are also in no small part a product of their circumstances and circumstances for 12-27 year olds now is very very different from 12-27 year olds back when boomers were that age. Frankly it would be weird if there weren't fairly stark generational differences.
Take for example the attitude of students at university. When I was at university, the old conservative government had been given the heave-ho, the economy was recovering well, prosperity was increasing. Fees were new (a bone of contention) but small compared to now but the general attitude was being there to learn (or party), it would be fine getting a job and on to the housing ladder and so on. Most students left home for university as the start of their adult life.
Compare to Gen Z now. The economy has been in a steady decline since the conservatives took over, public services and education are cut to the bone, fees are high, the loans have borderline abusive terms in terms of gold plating returns for the Tory donors who run the lending companies, inflation is running rampant and the cost of living is sky rocketing. Abusive zero hours contracts which prey on the desparate are common, the minimum wage is well below the minimum wage. Housing is out of reach of many even if they do score a good job after university. Many more students are staying home due to the impossible costs of moving out and have a long time with their parents to look forward to after because of housing costs. The optimism for the future has more or less gone, there's much more of a narrow focus. Expensive and unproductive drinking and partying has to an amazing extent given way to clean living and the gym.
If Gen-Z on the whole had the same attitude as X and early millennials at that point, it would be really bloody odd.
Yes there were clean living, focused x'ers and party hound Zs, but the average vibe has definitely shifted a lot.
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I got one years grant out of 3 for my uni degree. My parents helped where they could but I took a year off to do shit minimum wages jobs in smoke filled offices and warehouses to earn enough to pay for the course before I went.
As for housing I lived at home until my late 20s so I could afford a deposit for a flat so I could be screwed by the bank on an 8% mortgage.
Sure, things are even worse now but it wasn't a bed of roses when I was in my 20s in the 1990s either.
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I'm not trying to compete in the oppression Olympics here.
I'm talking about averages. There are always people who had to struggle through from an unprivileged position. And there will always be people born with a silver spoon in their mouth. The next generation of Tory prime ministers are at Eton now and will have an easy, well funded time studying rugby, drinking and PPE at Oxford.
Those grants are long gone, and house prices are now relatively higher than they were in the 90s. That means a larger fraction
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And there will always be people born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Which is hard on the mother, let's not forget. :-)
[ Can't remember who said (something like) that or in what movie. Anyone? ]
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Dividing by generations creates an 'us and/vs them' situation. That is all.
I have found some 8 year olds wiser and more capable than some 80 year olds. There really aren't many things that actually "define" a generation. For example: The September 11th attacks over 20 years ago are a very popular "dividing line" that is used to separate generations. As it turns out, the only 'division' there is is that the US government went full on internal spying. The economic winners are no longer random or based on meri
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Yes there may be overarching things that are more common to one generation than another but they pale into insignificance compared to the differences between individuals within those generations.
Of course, people are different, but when we are talking about generations, we are talking about overarching trends, mostly in western countries. And they are real. Except for baby boomers, who you can clearly see in demographic charts due to people making more babies just following WW2 (hence the name), the period is fuzzy, but it gives an idea of what are the defining thing about people who were born in a particular time.
It is kind of important for things like politics and economics. In an election for in
Re:Tired of this generation thing (Score:4, Interesting)
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I finished the final two years of my degree in a full-time undergraduate program at 45. From the perspective of a student, it was almost striking how little had changed. The same personality archetypes, the same common flaws, the same impressive strengths, the same super driven people, the same super lazy peopl people always talk about the younger generation like they’re fucking aliens and it’s absolutely bonkers. Sure, trying to remember to use alternate pronouns for people isn’t natural for me, but like any other bit of social protocol, it’s not about me. In my teenage years, kots of sad, rigid, middle-aged and older people refused to follow the younger generation’s lead in terms of avoiding casual slurs, or saying insanely sexiest things thoughtlessly. Everybody’s the same. The differences are window dressing, and largely situational. People that get their feathers ruffled about young people are just looking for scapegoats to blame for no longer understanding a world that they haven’t even tried to keep pace with since they were young.
Um, it cuts both ways ...
"From the perspective of a student, it was almost striking how little had changed. The same personality archetypes, the same common flaws, the same impressive strengths, the same super driven people, the same super lazy peopl people {...}"
Spot on.
"{... a bunch of stuff about how the current youngest perspective is always better}"
Um, no.
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Newsflash: People change as they get older.
Maybe so, but no matter how old I get I will NEVER lick my fingers before turning the page in a book...
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Fully agree. I think this is done because most people can only handle low or very low levels of complexity. Hence they want everything to be simplified and stereotyped. Of course this does result in a massive distortion of reality and basically no understanding of mechanisms. Add that some very rich and/or very powerful assholes are using this type of manipulation to push their own goals, and it becomes clear why this bad approach is so prevalent.
On the topic, I always was into physical books. The only reas
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There is a reason it is broken down into generations. The reasons are not good.
Not really a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
They're also reviving old computers, vinyl records, cassette tapes, 8-track tapes and other "vintage" things that those from my generation couldn't wait to be finally rid of. Dead tree books are just part of the vintage hobby I guess.
But I will say this: book are in another category. As much as I happily ditched physical music and movie media of yesteryear, I could never quite get used to ebooks. They're almost good, and they're really convenient to carry a lot of books with you when you travel. But they're not quite good enough. Paper books are second-to-none when it comes to reading comfort, when reading for hours at a time, and paper feels better - and often smells better too.
I moved across continents several times in my life, and each time I had to sell almost all my belongings to make the move less expensive. But I could never part with my books. Those heavy hunks of dead pulped trees have been following me for decades, and although I've read them all, I just can't part with them. It's like an emotional connection I just don't have with an ebook reader.
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"As much as I happily ditched physical music and movie media of yesteryear"
I used to think that, then we had a broadband outtage for a few days** and had to fall back to CDs and DVDs. You know what? It was just simpler- no endless button mashing, menu diving and/or typing to find what you want - just sling the thing in the machine and press play. YMMV of course.
** Yeah I tried tethering but my phone wasn't really up to it plus it was using up my monthly allowance like you wouldn't believe.
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I used to think that, then we had a broadband outtage for a few days
Yeah okay, I didn't express myself quite correctly. I meant to say I'm happy to ditched DEDICATED physical music and movie media, that tend to take up a lot of space and tend to degrade ot be fragile.
Streaming isn't even an option for me. What you get with streaming is dependent on the internet being up, and the whim of whichever streaming platforms you use. That can fuck right off.
I was talking about flash storage in its multiple incantations mainly (SSDs, flash drives, USB fobs...) but also hard drives an
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IME some DVDs and CDs degrade within a few years particularly if they're some version of writable. But pressed ones apart from a few exceptions seem to last for a long time. My oldest CD is from 1987 (when bought, not album release date) and still plays like new.
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Nothing commonly available is really very good for long term storage except maybe archival optical, and it doesn't store very much. It's fine for documents and music, anything else and it begins to become unwieldy. HDDs stored for long periods tend to have stiction problems, and even if the mechanical part would last forever, the electronics won't.
I was promised holographic crystal storage by around now! *shakes fist*
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You know what? It was just simpler- no endless button mashing, menu diving and/or typing to find what you want - just sling the thing in the machine and press play. YMMV of course.
MM definitely varies ...
Sure, your broadband outage is a fair point.
But what I just quoted above? C'mon now. It's way easier to just fire up a playlist, station, or search result on Spotify, Pandora, or whatever, than to find and play the songs you want out of a pile of physical CDs (unless you literally only want to play entire albums).
Re:Not really a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sorry I meant a physical ebook reader, with an e-paper display.
Mine is an original Sony PRS-650: it's still very good and it's not encumbered by DRM. But it's not quite as good as a real book.
Still, nothing beats it for portability, and it plays music too - something real books don't do so well :)
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The drm on a kindle doesn't have to be super-duper to do what it's intended to do.
It makes Martha go out and buy the book when Meg tells her it's a good one during their weekly sewing circle/gossip session.
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Iffy.
I've taken to reading some older classics, and as my vocabulary of 19th century (or older) norms and usage isn't that strong; being able to look up unfamiliar words with even more ease than typing them into a search engine has been a godsend not only in speed but maintaining context. Books that would have been months long (or longer) affairs are far more approachable. Nevermind easily accessible notes on historical data, errata, or other tidbits that really help make an ancient text come alive.
Physical
Re-defining Revival. (Score:1)
They're also reviving old computers, vinyl records, cassette tapes, 8-track tapes and other "vintage" things that those from my generation couldn't wait to be finally rid of.
Turning fresh-pressed $30 vinyl into wall art while not even owning a record player, isn't exactly what I would call a format revival. More like a FOMO debt feeder. I'd imagine the rest of this "vintage" list is about the same, since hardware makers haven't even bothered with a revival of cassette or 8-track players.
Dead tree books are just part of the vintage hobby I guess.
Not really, since every educational institution globally still actively uses them. I can find plenty of humans who don't know what an 8-track is. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who do
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Kindles are fantastic. Just get the basic model ones with a backlit epaper screen and a good leather case for them (The screens are basically 1mm glass and crack if you even look at them the wrong way) and you have something thats extremely comfortable to read on. I take mine everywhere. Reading on phones is awful, but the kindles are great.
That said I still will always have a soft spot for paper books and if I *really* like a book I'll usually end up getting it in paper for the collection. Sometimes its ju
Re:Ignorance of statistics = non-story (Score:4, Informative)
They just don't like doing STEM.
I'm sure the presence of people like you banging on about woke, and broad-brushing half the population in one go has nothing to do with it.
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it isn't that they do not like doing STEM, they just do not like the male culture around STEM. When I was asst. dir. of a uni lab, the women were very socializing and frequently discussed their research with each other. The men were solitary figures and didn't want to talk to anyone. I admit it is merely one data point, but it gave me a feeling about the differences and why women do not like a male-dominated profession.
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Got it.
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Now look, the "won't own" generation won't have it (Score:5, Interesting)
They won't own a thing and be happy... well, apparently they are not.
This generation learned something the hard way: They will not own anything big. They will never own their home. They can't afford it, and even if they could, they can't qualify for the loan necessary to buy one. They will not even own their car, and they noticed that increasingly they don't even own anything they actually managed to buy. The electronic crap they buy sooner or later ceases to function when the maker decides so, the games they "buy" lose their server side and thus become bit-waste, the e-books they buy suddenly vanish from the store because someone decided that you should not read it.
They want to own something.
And when you have a physical book that nobody can remotely yank out of your hands, a physical record that isn't encumbered by DRM and can be played forever (or at least for as long as the physical medium lasts), this is something you genuinely "own". Something that you have, that you control and that nobody can take from you for the sole reason of "I don't think you should have this anymore".
They don't want some sort of ersatz-helicopter-parents in media companies. They are already fed up enough with their real helicopter parents, they sure don't want to have a new set.
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They are already fed up enough with their real helicopter parents
"Helicopter parents" eh?
Dude... It's 2024. It's drone parents now.
It's like helicopter parents, but the surveillance is even more intense and the children can't tell they're under surveillance.
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Oh believe me, kids know they're under surveillance. And they get better at evading it.
Which is a good thing, we need adults that can, and when is a better time to learn than when you're young?
Parenting is Surveillance. (Score:2)
Good thing? Guess that depends on the harm caused.
Funny thing about wisdom; you won’t find many 35-year old humans bragging about how wise and intelligent they were at 15 years old. We ALL now know how very incapable we were as teenagers, and we realize that when we become adults.
Parenting is surveillance. You either see the point in it, or you don’t.
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There is a difference between parental supervision and total surveillance. And if you don't understand that difference, I hope you don't have kids.
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There is a difference between parental supervision and total surveillance. And if you don't understand that difference, I hope you don't have kids.
The difference is the world we live in. When mitigating potential harm to children before amounted to turning off the TV and locking the front door, supervision was quite effective, along with education.
When that potential harm is beamed into a home from every conceivable angle well beyond physical boundaries, to include adult topics being perpetuated in the elementary classroom beyond the home, it's rather obvious you should be shifting supervision/surveillance strategies accordingly. That 24/7/365 hardc
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Have you tried educating your children to know when they're being bullshitted into believing lies?
What am I saying, who'd first of all educate our adults?
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Have you tried educating your children to know when they're being bullshitted into believing lies?
Sure. But child educators these days see fit to teach bullshit to children, because politics. So now we have to work extra hard as parents. One could say the 'insider threat' has become a bit more pervasive, which drives necessary changes in tactics as parents when it comes to monitoring.
What am I saying, who'd first of all educate our adults?
We might want to better understand why a Government seemingly wants to support the destruction of education first. Hard to defeat ignorance if someone is still handing out participation trophies for it.
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Pol Pot already knew that dimwits are easier to control and govern.
We've added a layer to it, since we still need a nomenclatura. So the public schools for the plebs get destroyed and we create a mass of dimwits that bicker over petty crap to keep them busy while the aristocracy gets to teach their kids, the future movers and shakers, how to best fleece the flock.
Re:Parenting is Surveillance. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is the world we live in.
No. The difference is you are embracing your fear of the world, instead of living in it.
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The difference is the world we live in.
No. The difference is you are embracing your fear of the world, instead of living in it.
Shit Happens. To everyone. Including our children. That is a reality.
Our corrupt wireless world is pervasive, and extends well beyond deadbolts now. Including our children. That is a reality.
I don't fear it when Shit Happens. I fear the ones who assume it won't ever happen. Including our children.
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I believe we were speaking across wires.
I would agree that teaching society about the harm of unjustified mass surveillance, is certainly something of value.
Children learning how to evade the very surveillance their parents put them under, is not what I would call something of value. Best to instead educate them as to why you are using surveillance in parenting. The hacking workshop comes later.
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Well, me constantly having to thwart my father's attempt to encroach on my privacy led me to be a well paid and highly respected security researcher with a couple of publications that are considered important standards today.
If my father hadn't been the pain in the ass he was, I might just have enjoyed some video games before bailing and having fun around town.
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Hey, someone got it. Security is not perfect when it keeps people from doing their job, security is perfect when everyone can do what they need to do and security knows all the time what everyone is doing and can keep them out of harm's way.
Did you read my book on how to secure your company?
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I have pretty high hopes for the younger generations. The boomers are on the way out. They just wanna finish their "me first and gimmegimme" lifestyle and don't give a fuck about anything coming past time. They're part of the problem but won't be part of the solution.
My generation was "yuppies" when we were young. And a lot of us still behave like that. "I got the brains, you got the looks, let's make lots of money" was the catchphrase of the 80s. And the 90s were only marginally better, I was a kid of the
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A society is thriving when old men plant trees, knowing fully well that they will never sit in their shadows.
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>They want to own something.
I think that is the most insightful comment I have read for a long time. Great analysis.
My attic is creaking under the weight of a ton of books, but at least I know when I go up there, they will still work!
Sad reflection on the digital age though.
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This generation learned something the hard way: They will not own anything big. They will never own their home
This is a very widespread perception, but it's false.
The fact is that gen Z is tracking ahead of millennials and gen X in home ownership rates by age. Gen Z's home ownership rates are about on par with boomers' ownership rates when boomers were in their early 20s. But it's also important to realize that we're talking about differences of a few percentage points. For example, the biggest gap (in 2022 data) is at age 40, where 62% of 40 year-old millennials owned homes vs 69% of boomers owned a home when t
Pros & cons (Score:2)
Digital text: Takes up no physical space so is easy to store & transport, is searchable, texts can be easily analysed & transformed, font size can be enlarged conveniently for eas
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IMO, books are one of the greatest inventions since evar. Not just for the transfer of knowledge, but for their role as an engineering solution for reading.
Scrolls, clay tablets, ogham, screens - please, give me a book unless it's text I have to manipulate.
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My hope is that large e-ink devices get cheaper before too long, although I don't have any particular hope that this will happen.
I've done a lot of recreational reading on computer screens, and I still prefer something more like paper.
I just want a reader that has a page the size of a trade paperback. If I could get one that would tolerate grease, oil, and solvent I'd like one with an A4 page (lots of automotive documentation is in this size, and also it would be good for a slightly scaled letter size with
What's old is new again !! (Score:2)
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Space (Score:2)
The luddies weren't all wrong (Score:2)
An e-book is convenient to carry, it's easy to track your last spot and return to it or search for a passage you recall... but it just isn't as comfortable as reading a paper book.
Having said that, generally the convenience factor wins out and I use my e-reader, but I'm not giving up my book collection any time soon.
Maybe a small comeback (Score:2)
There may be a new generation that is interested in paper books, just like there's a generation now chasing vinyl records. But the wave is small. If you have a collection of old books in your study, good luck getting someone to buy them from you, or even to take them for free. Used and new bookstores are dying off. The larger trend is still towards the demise of physical books.
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I'm glad you enjoy old books so much, and that's wonderful. But I'll point out that this article is about Gen Z. They never got that first kiss in the library, they don't have those fond memories connected to old books.
And those old people who never surrender their book collection...my in-laws are among them. And one day my wife and I will have to haul all those old books to the dump, because nobody wants them. And believe me, they've tried to find somebody who would take them!
Sad, but life moves on.
Gee, I wonder why? (Score:3)
Maybe people are tired of having the books that they "own" vaporize when the company in charge of the DRM goes out of business? Or simply decides to change its business model to extract more money?
Or maybe people don't like data from their reading habits being fed into a big data hoover that profiles them and relentlessly markets to them?
Or maybe people like to read on "devices" that don't require batteries?
Don't get me wrong... I'm not a Luddite and I appreciate some of the use-cases for e-readers. The technology is fine. But it's the rapacious business model of large tech companies that sucks.
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Maybe people are tired of having the books that they "own" vaporize when the company in charge of the DRM goes out of business? Or simply decides to change its business model to extract more money?
Has that happened?
Obviously it could happen, but has it?
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