The Electronic Document Systems Foundation produces various reports for sale. The summary of the 1997 Network, Screen and Page report is available in PDF and paints a different picture about reading than the more recent NEA report Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America.
Here is a quote from the EDSF report,
Detailed time-use studies, based on diaries and household surveys, reveal that reading occupies a fairly steady niche in the repertoire of America’s time-use practices. Even as more and more Americans go on-line and find themselves looking at a screen rather than at a printed page, they will still be reading. Recent patterns show that individuals tend to read more as they get older and computer users read more than non-users. If these trends continue we may indeed expect an overall increase in aggregate per capita reading time as the huge baby-book population ages and as more and more people go on-line. (Network, Screen and Page: The Future of Reading in a Digital Age, Executive Summary, page 11, published by The Electronic Document Systems Foundation, http://www.edsf.org/, prepared by INTERQUEST and the Universtiy of Virginia.)
Two critical takes on the NEA report in blogs are:
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum: Reading at Risk (Film at 11)
Reading at Risk from Library – um, I mean Internet
See comments on both.
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