Parents and Kids Still Prefer Print Books
How are parents and their kids using e-books at home? Lori Takeuchi, director of research for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, discussed preliminary results from a new study on this subject during her speech to the American Library Association’s Annual Conference.
Almost half of the respondents to the center’s survey (553 out of 1,200 parents) said they read e-books to their kids, while 332 said they owned e-readers but chose not to share them with their children. Some of the top reasons caregivers choose not to introduce e-readers are that they prefer print, they find e-books more difficult to read, and they worry that their child will want to use e-readers exclusively.
Of those parents who used e-readers with their kids, 88.4 percent were mothers with a mean age of 37.5 and who had a child averaging 4.3 years old. Although Takeuchi stressed that the sampling wasn’t a broad representation, the findings show that respondents tend to be educated, fairly wealthy, and white.
Of those who read e-books with their kids, 73 percent believe their read-aloud functions help children learn to read, while 21 percent feel it distracts kids from learning to read. Close to 80 percent of parents who use e-books with their kids say they still prefer print books, and 61 percent of their children do, too, Takeuchi says. Some 77 percent of parents also say they give their kids ebooks to read alone, while 23 percent say they never do. Read more here.
Interesting that parents and kids still prefer print books . . . children’s books seem like one category of texts that might remain mostly on paper. Or will they? What do you think?
It’s pretty clear in this research that the parents have a strong influence on what kids prefer, which makes sense because kids spend most of their time at home with their parents. I think eventually most children’s books will become e-books; just think about how much quicker and cheaper they will be able to be produced. But, it will take time to convince parents. This past year at the school where I teach, we took away paper folders that were sent home every Friday and instead used e-folders that parents could connect to through the school management software we use. You would not believe how much resistance has come from that – the parents wanted to go back to paper forms! There are still many parents resisting. I’ll be honest, I resisted at first, but now I see how much easier it is and, although it is a pain at times, I do enjoy being able to get materials quicker and not lose them on my desk. Many parents still need to be convinced, but I think eventually e-books will be preferred.
Although my children are well past storytelling age I still prefer “print books” to e-books for young people. My rationale is the fun of reading the book to your child is the page turning anticipation of what’s going to come next. The e-books can never give you that same feeling. I enjoy reading the old fashion way (print books) with my 4-yr granddaughter and she enjoys it as well. However, the greatest benefit of the e-books is when the child is old enough to read on their own. I’ve heard some tweens/teenagers go through a lot of books because of the convenience of pulling out an e-reader just about anywhere. So it’s really a matter of preference one is not necessarily better than the other.