Revisiting Rama: A lament about the decline of reading

Revisiting Rama

A lament about the decline of reading

 

Apologies to folks who landed on this page, seeking religious salvation of some sort. I remain resolutely areligious, and I am sorry to say, not in imminent danger of any awakening, religious or otherwise. The title simply refers to an old book, and of course, my affinity for alliteration. Anyway, I should get back to the topic on hand, which ironically has something to do with our declining attention spans!

 

I recently came across an ebook copy of the Arthur C Clarke classic, Rendezvous with Rama. For those unaware of the book, it’s about an unidentified object detected in our solar system: a story of first contact. The unusual name given to the object, Clarke explains, was because, having exhausted Roman and Greek mythological figures, astronauts were “going through the Hindu pantheon”. The book took me back over 30 years, to Sunday mornings spent waiting patiently, for a blue-green public library bus. As young boys in a small town, we raided the bus for anything that would last us the whole week. We considered comics infra dig (except for the occasional Asterix). Besides, they wouldn’t last more than 40 minutes! Archies’ were a blasphemous waste of a precious library card. In any case, we would end up finishing our novels by Tuesday, and wait once again for Sunday. The point is, reading used to be fun!

 

Now, many years later, though I begin reading many books enthusiastically, I only occasionally manage to finish them. So I was pleasantly surprised when I re-read Rendezvous in a single sitting. Why can’t I do this more often? Maybe the years spent in medical school reading insipid, mind-numbing prose has taken its toll. Or perhaps, all the training to write precise, utilitarian English, has made me impatient with style or ornamentation. That also explains my problem with poetry. (https://randomramblings2018.blogspot.com/2021/02/why-cant-i-appreciate-poetry.html) But then again, these may be just excuses for a generic laziness, with the ready availability of media that can be consumed passively. (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/why-we-dont-read-revisited)

 

Opium of the masses

Sure enough, the data do suggest that fewer and fewer people are reading, at least in the English speaking world. For example, time use survey data from the US show that the amount of time spent reading for pleasure among people 15 years or older, has declined from 23 minutes a day in 2004 to 16 minutes in 2019. (https://www.statista.com/chart/27287/average-hours-spent-per-day-by-americans-reading-for-pleasure/) This decline is even more dramatic among children in the UK: a fall from 38% in 2012 to 23% in 2020. (https://www.farshore.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/46/2021/03/Learnings-From-Lockdown-18th-March-2021.pdf) Clearly, people are seeking pleasure from passive consumption. Video (read Instagram, Tik Tok and You Tube) is the biggest culprit, as it takes the least effort to consume. The decreasing duration of video clips reinforces the trend of shortening attention spans. Perhaps this sensory inundation has contributed to the rapid fall in attentions spans in general. In an elegant study, a bunch of Danish and German researchers showed that our collective attention spans have declined quite perceptibly in recent years. For example, over a short period of time (2013-2016), the duration for which a Twitter hashtag remained among the top trending ones, fell from 17.5 to about 12 hours. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09311-w) Similar trends were seen with movies, books and even scientific publications.

 

Podcasts: hearing but not listening?

The occasional misinformation, and idiocy notwithstanding, I feel less uncharitable towards podcasts as a substitute for reading. But this maybe just my biased view. Podcast listening has been increasing over the last decade, and has particularly caught on during the pandemic. The proportion of Americans who have listened to a podcast in the last month increased from 15% in 2014 to 41% in 2021. (https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/audio-and-podcasting/) In general, the interest in podcasts peaked during the early months of the pandemic in most of the world. The increase in interest was more pronounced in some less developed countries. (Figure)

 

Figure: Interest in podcasts before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (Google Trends data)

Although there are no data, I would like to think that the people who listen to podcasts are generally those who also read. Or at least, used to read. But then, is this a good substitute for reading? Attentive reading involves a whole set of processes that have been shown to develop and maintain neural connections involved in language processing and memory. (https://doi.org/10.1089%2Fbrain.2013.0166) Some studies have shown a reduction in the risk of dementia with “intellectual activities” including reading books, among Chinese seniors. (https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.0657) Some of you may wish to note that the “intellectual activities” in this study also included betting on horse racing! Although it seems to push credulity, one recent study found that regular reading reduced the risk of dying over a 12 year period by 20%! (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fgeroni%2Figx004.1696) Strangely, the benefits did not extend to the same extent to reading newspapers or magazines! Presumably the daily news can kill you. So, can podcasts really compete with the benefits of reading? I am not sure. But listening is a simpler cognitive process, and is often done in conjunction with other activities (exercising, driving, etc.), and I suspect that it may be overall less salutary. At least one study showed that students listening to study material on podcasts performed poorly when compared to others who studied from printed material. (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F00986283.2010.488542)

Reading, for the sake of reading

At the end of this ramble (with a misleading title to boot), I don’t wish to leave you with the impression that the decline in reading is somehow going to cause an insidious dumbing down of the world, or kill us off early. The access to more information, from multiple sources is certainly an advantage, particularly if one can harness it effectively. What I am simply suggesting is that amidst all the audio and visual media clamouring for our attention, we should try and make time for attentive reading. Just read for the fun of it. For those you who already do read, in the coming years, maybe you’ll be a rare breed, and reading will be your superpower!