Carine RoucanDoctor in French language and literature, Qualified for the functions of MCF section 9, Member of GRIC UR4314. Teacher of literature, expression and publishing, Le Havre Normandy University
This article is republished from The Conversation sous licence Creative Commons. Lire l’article original.
Since the 1990s, there has been a lot of questioning about the reading practices of young people, lamenting that they are turning less to this leisure activity than previous generations. It is when entering middle school that a drop-off occurs: the declared number of books read drops from the age of 11.
However, the picture for children’s publishing is far from gloomy: in 2020, the value of sales increased by 9.9% and by 16% in 2021, and purchases of digital books for children increased by 44%. % in 2020, during confinement. The largest increase concerns literature for children, but adolescents have also been offered titles that better correspond to their world, which is largely transmedia.
To better understand how these a priori contradictory trends can coexist, perhaps we need to review our traditional representations. What if young people, rather than reading less, actually read differently? Let’s examine these new uses, linked to the place of screens in childhood and adolescence.
3 hours 14 minutes of reading per day
If we often contrast books with screens, the latest surveys consider the e-book as a book in its own right, which makes it possible to better assess the number of books read. However, this consideration does not allow us to consider all of adolescents’ literary activities, which can also take place on screen. Surfing the Internet can also mean buying books and consulting reading advice.
But we continue to divide the two spaces. The Ipsos survey on young French people and reading indicates that 7-19 year olds read 13 minutes more than in 2016, but that they spend less time reading (3h14 per day on average) than on screens. (3h50 per day on average).
As digital books are not very widespread (less than 10% of publishers’ total sales), we do not envisage that screen time can also be integrated into reading time. The summary of figures for children’s publishing also states that in 2022, the results are “down after an exceptional year” but this drop in sales of children’s books, of 11%, obscures the fact that sales of digital books increased by 7.1% over this same period.
Of course, we must also consider these developments with regard to the place of paper and digital books for all readers. Nevertheless, youth reading is counted in terms of sales of ebooks or subscriptions to packages or portals, that is to say in commercial figures, which are very telling but which, nowadays, do not reflect free reading time for texts published on online reading environments, books purchased second-hand, but also ebooks downloaded illegally (the publishers’ efforts show that the phenomenon is sufficiently widespread to be commercially worrying).
It is therefore extremely important to question reading time, and the genre of books read, to find out whether young people are reading more or less than before.
However, if the profound change that has affected the world of books was initiated by the ebook, another turning point has begun with social networks and in the form of reading and writing platforms. On the network side, Instagram and TikTok have taken over from YouTube videos, thus drowning out reading tips in the flow of posts, so that it is extremely difficult to quantify the time spent watching these reading tips.
Regarding platforms, such as Wattpad and Webtoon for the most famous, they are often omitted by young people themselves when asked how much time they spend reading, and are not counted in book sales even digital, while they are focused on creating and sharing stories.
This platformization of the world of books is part of the new cultural ecosystem which strives to attract adolescents by focusing on free, personalization of content and a plethora of offerings, all of which ensures that they find texts that they like and commensurate with their financial means. This free hyperchoice also attracts because it is practiced on touch screens: the digital gesture provokes an intimacy with the story that we adapt to ourselves, in its layout and its arrangement, in the choices made among those of the algorithm, like an extension of itself.
Sick-lit, New Romance, Fantasy… Genres popular with young people
We should not believe that this is just a vast seduction enterprise: these platforms are transforming practices and worrying the book industry. Indeed, the classic editorial model is based on the legitimacy granted to authors and texts through a selection made by editors who thus guarantee literary quality to the published texts. The platforms correspond to a data economy: free access is based on the resale of user data and leaves aside the criterion of recognition of literary quality. Thus, the success of a text posted online depends on the number of people who read it.
Does favoring these reading channels amount to ignoring quality and subscribing to a certain frivolity? In reality, what motivates young people is the search for texts that appeal to them and more closely reflect their vision of the world. This question has always been asked, and corresponds to the issues raised by popular literature.
The ideal found on reading platforms is to put the reader at the center of the process: they choose the texts they like from millions of stories offered (more than 100 million on Wattpad, all languages combined), classified according to categories which evolve over the course of published texts and which are therefore not fixed.
Wattpad: The YouTube of books (Canal+, 2018).
This is how new categories are born, such as Young Adult literature, divided into categories and subcategories which establish a classification not prescriptive, but with the aim of offering readers texts likely to interest them. Laurent Bazin in his study Young Adult Literature distinguishes two major genres which are themselves divided into sub-genres:
- Fantasy, first of all, which continues this literary and editorial genre by breaking it down into medieval, historical, mythical, urban, oriental, steampunk, and dystopia fantasy;
- Romance, which renews the old sentimental novel under the influence of Anglo-Saxon “romance”, which is available in “chick-lit” (a genre to which novels like Bridget Jones), “bit-lit” (in the wake of the success of Twilight), new romance et new adult.
Categories continue to be invented, as soon as an unclassifiable text is posted, this is how “sick-lit” and “feel-good books” were born.
Readers and authors both
This space of freedom of choice is accompanied by a writing space that everyone can use, because we entrust our text to the community and not to a selective editorial system. This operation, putting aside social differences and promoting commitment, is certainly what attracts young people the most: not only are they used to it, but they benefit from it being at the same time readers, authors, critics, proofreaders.
Since 2012, publishing houses have tried to follow, of course, these trends and publish texts posted on platforms, such as those of Nine Gorman, creating new collections for adolescents and young adults. Fanfiction is a genre now taken seriously. Publishing houses are developing bookstagrams and booktoks and are thus investing in young people’s digital spaces. Thus, publishing houses have included reading and writing platforms in their editorial operations. Literary influencers are also widely listened to.
Where are the young people, then, when it comes to reading and literature? Where we don’t expect them. In the New World, that of the third millennium. Society is torn between the desire to bring them back to the old system, based on books, preferably paper, and the need to follow them in these new co-writing spaces. However, beyond societal questions, this free and shared culture also raises legal and financial questions around copyright.
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