Has texting influenced people's reading habits? How about their answers?

[QueryJ]

Some in education claim that writing styles are changing, and possibly reading, since sales of lengthy books are lower. What do you think?
At 2:53 PM within one hour I was asked to vote...
I want to leave this question open and see if we get more interesting responses

[Yellow Go Lightly]

Not me. I've never even owned a cell phone. Never sent a text, never received a text message.

I read all the time - I have quite a library at home. Books will never be replaced among the literate.

[lucinda]

Writing styles have changed dramatically, as have reading styles. We are very quickly become an illiterate society. Texting has influenced people writing and reading abilities, as have a lot of other things. I am very disappointed in the way things are turning out.

[RaiJa]

It is most definitely changing writing styles which will change reading habits. Scary, huh. Just look at the most recent words that have been added to our dictionary. It will blow your mind... I hope

[Fluffy]

I strongly agree that writing styles r changing! Txting has influenced it a gr8 deal! Bcause our younger generation txts soo muchh it starts being shown in their writing e.g. Instead of writing straight they write str8 without even knowing that txting is influencing their writing! However I do not think that it is responsible for lower sales! I think that the upcoming generation just doesn't have interests in reading!

[Jeff Wampler]

What an interesting question.

I don't think that it has changed anyone's reading habits. There have always been people who like to read and will read books. As a previous answer stated, and I'm paraphrasing, literate people will always read and books will never be replaced.

It's true that more and more people are reading less. I don't think this has to do with texting. Probably technology in general. I'll bet that if you look at when television was invented, reading has probably been on a steady decline ever since.

And with more and more people getting their entertainment through their computers and cell phones, it's no doubt that reading a physical book would drop on the priority list.

I would say that I think people are reading more because they read text messages. Many times people who don't read books will read text messages. So in that since, text messaging is increasing readership.

But reading is usually a recreation or entertainment activity. And there are so many other things that are "easier" to do, i.e. watch tv, movies, play video games (there's another point...video game technology is outrageous and takes a lot of people's time), spending time on facebook, or time answering other people's questions (doh!), instead of picking up paper and ink and actually using your brain and reading it.

Actually using your brain to read and think is a pretty hard activity...it gets easier the more you do it, but it is in a lot of ways harder than actual physical manual labor.

So what is my point of all my ramblings...here it is:

Are people reading less? Probably. I wouldn't be surprised.

Has this to do with texting? Not at all. I can't identify a link between the two. If anything, people are reading more (because people who don't read books are reading text messages).

Anyway...good question...very interesting...can't wait to see how the rest of the peanut gallery responds.

[Zarg222]

I'm 51, I grew up a reader, I am still an avid reader, I am also very tech savvy, BUT - I have never owned a cell phone that had texting capabilities and probably never will - I actually only ever owned my own cell phone for about a year and rarely used it. I rarely talk on ANY kind of phone

I mostly use email and Facebook to communicate with the few people in my life worth communicating with

I may get an e-reader device eventually, but that is still reading to me