Long suspected and now confirmed; the death of the traditional book is upon us, at least for Nanjing’s students. In a new survey published by Nanjing Agriculture University, the smart phone is favoured over print by 87 percent of participants.
The survey, conducted by professor Mao Yihong of the university’s Information, Science and Technology College, questioned over three hundred students from nine colleges in Nanjing, also interestingly revealed participants reasons for choosing the small screen.
The printed word in China is a laborious, time consuming and bureaucratic procedure, whereas the Net is instantaneous. This notion was reinforced in the findings of the survey wherein students exhibited a discrimination against books in favour of the online word that is seen as being simply more adventurous.
Through comparing statistics, Prof. Mao also finds that the extent of preference is quite different among college students of different age, diploma and major. For example, art students are more likely to be in favour of mobile reading than others.
The survey also revealed that while those who use smartphones mainly for up-to-date news and anecdotes, or information from Weibo and WeChat, showed a reduced preference for the small screen (at only 50/50), the majority prefer to lose themselves in Net literature, such as fantasy novels.
Catering to easy pleasures is also a key reason for students’ love of reading on their smartphones. “The main purpose of service providers is to profit. Aiming at college students’ interest in fresh and exciting things, they offer products and services to stimulate these interests”, said Prof. Mao, who went on to suggest that most people have a misunderstanding that mobile reading is shallow reading.
Rather than try to reverse the inevitability of technological progress, Prof. Mao feels students should improve their quality of mobile reading by choosing meaningful reads, concluding, “It is unnecessary to throw away the apple because of its core”.
