With 75,000 visitors, the Brussels Book Fair has just been packed. Last week’s event was the release of Salman Rushdie’s latest, The Knife. But these small victories do not concern everyone. That’s the least we can say. A study has just shown that 40% of Belgians do not even read one book per year and it is women who are helping to lower this average. In the fringes of heavy readers we find the most educated, the most affluent and the most active. Reading therefore does not depend on free time. It is first of all a question of choice and above all of capacity. In the last Pisa evaluation, a large international survey which measures the abilities of 15-year-old students in math, science and mother tongue, all levels have regressed, particularly reading (Belgium is in the European average). The consequences of Covid on learning cannot justify the fact that, for twenty years, the ability to read has continued to decline. When reading requires effort and understanding of the text is incomplete, it is not surprising that young people move on to something else.
France publishes a large study on the subject. It shows that, in this country with a reputation for literature, a large majority of those under 20 only read if they are obliged to do so by school. The average daily reading time has fallen to 19 minutes, ten times less than the ever-increasing amount of time spent on screens (up to 5 hours 10 minutes per day for 16-19 year olds). Some (20%) can only read for between 5 and 15 minutes at a time, two thirds do not exceed half an hour. This collapse in concentration worries experts. They still only observe a marginal loss of intelligence quotient. But there is a lack of perspective to measure the consequences of a youth spent on screens, a context that specialists describe as “an addictive confinement” and for which they draw parallels with behaviors linked to taking and needing drugs.
People over twenty are also familiar with this dependence. But at least they had their chance. They were able to develop the intellectual structures that underpin critical thinking. Through books, they had access to fine and profound knowledge. They were able to experience what a subtle mastery of the language is. They should be able to distinguish a hierarchy in the accuracy of expression and better understand the issues in the world. Without even invoking the pleasure that exposure to literature brings, but from a purely utilitarian point of view, they trained their empathy, therefore the understanding of others, their thoughts, emotions and convictions. And if they continued reading, they may have browsed Vallée de silicium by Alain Damasio, great master of almost prophetic science fiction. This time, the novelist instead carried out a long report in Silicon Valley to demonstrate that GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) are not there to save humanity, but to monetize available brain time.
