With the growing influence and liking of social media, it will surely become difficult to fill the room with books. A survey in the UK showed that with the increasing age, the tendency to read a book decreases; the effect is profoundly seen when comparison was made between three age groups - six to eight, 12-14, and 15-17-year-old. There has been frowning from parents and many quarters of society towards the teen indulgence in FB, the internet, and other social media websites. They are not happy with the neglect of reading books. Thus it’s worthwhile to discuss the thought that whether social media is killing the practice of reading books?
The study revealed that 92.72 percent of respondents visit social media sites every day and spent between 30 minutes to three hours, while 66.78 percent of respondents indicated that the use of social media affected their reading habits.
"A room without books is like a body without a soul." - Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Social media encompass a wide array of technological applications that enable the user to create, manage, and share content, post comments, and engage in discussions anywhere around the world in real-time. The prevalent use of social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram has grabbed the attention of people all over the world.
The splendid growth in social media applications and increased adoption of the applications by people around the world during the last few years have revolutionized how people communicate and share information. Social media influenced the lifestyle of an individual, revolutionized communication, collaboration, and creativity. It has many options and facilities on the same channel for the user, such as texting, image sharing, audio, and video sharing, fast publishing, linking all over the world and with other social media applications.
The people use different social networking sites and are a member of these sites considered it trend and style of today. Young adults particularly students have embraced social media very fast. Social media have positive as well as negative effects on the reading habits of students. Findings suggested that social media use is negatively associated with reading and academic performance. They also noted that about two-thirds of college students were found using social media while in class or reading. This multitasking increases distraction and becomes detrimental to students reading abilities. Students find reading books one of the boring activities they carry out on daily basis and find social media sites the most interesting activity they carry out on a daily basis.
So, therefore, the social has affected students both positively and negatively in terms of academic activities. So student makes use of the social media site to get significant information for educational activities or to share ideas on a particular topic taught in class and to share decision and also solve difficult problems among themselves using the social media while some student just wastes their time on the social media site without getting any valuable information that will improve them academically.
Whereas on the other side Reading books benefits both your physical and mental health, and those benefits can last a lifetime. They begin in early childhood and continue through the senior years. It can benefit you in so many ways like the improvisation of brain connectivity, increasing your vocabulary and comprehension, empowers you to empathize with other people, aids in sleep readiness, reduces stress, lowers blood pressure and heart rate, fights depression symptoms, prevents cognitive decline as you age.
