Is Reading Still Relevant?

Books are not so popular now, given that social medias have dominated our lives.

Who can blame us? I mean, you tell me, on which media you are able to sustain more attention? On pics & vids, or long texts?

Until secondary school. I loved reading. So much. I could read up to 3 100-pages books in 1 week, and I could remember what I was reading. I don't even know now how many books I currently have.

But after secondary school, which is the period when I started to really use smartphones, I began to spend quite a time on social medias. Ultimately, I lost interest in reading books, and I am more attracted to pics & vids. Even in reading articles, I would be selective in regards of the length.

So what? Has reading, in this era, become irrelevant? If not, will it become irrelevant one day?

Personally, I don't think so. And it is not just because of the classics "Books will always continue to exist just because."

People, especially the elders, keep telling us how wasteful the current generation is to lack skill in sustaining attention to read. This will allegedly lead us to the lack of knowledge.

Is this true?
Try to think about this.

-There are a lot of beneficial videos, delivered effectively, that can make us gain knowledge more efficiently than us trying to read the book worth the same value, which may take longer time to read and digest
-There are also a lot of useless books being sold in the market, and not surprisingly, the demand for this kind of books is higher than the demand for the beneficial one
- And of course, there are a lot of rubbish online content (pictures, videos, articles, etc), and the demand for these things are higher than the demand for actual beneficial content.

So, what does this mean?

I don't think the question is has reading become irrelevant.
I don't thing the main focus is about printed physical books either.

The main focus is actually the content, and how it has changed.

Think about it.

Everything that you consume is called content, right?
Even this post that you are reading now is some type of content.
Now, for a very long time, people consume content through physical material.
Only after the rise of technology in gadgets, new ways to deliver contents also rises.

But the book industry, or generally physical content industry, is a long industry, or a matured industry, I shall say.
They already have systematic way on delivering content, so they (at least seems to) focus more on producing valuable content.

Online content on the other hand, is a new thing. People are still trying to figure out how it works. So, the best way to figure it out, and get profit at the same time to sustain it, is to produce what people (mostly) demand. And obviously, entertainment has always been one of the top demand.

I believe that one day online content will achieve that level of maturity, and ultimately have more systematic and less disorganized ways on delivering it. Then we'll see how we can 'mainstream' values in it, just like what we do with books.

So, back to the question; is reading still relevant? Yes.
But let's not worry about that. Because despite whatever medium we have, the content that we are consuming is the key.

If you have Playboy magazines hidden under your bed, can you still say that reading is 'good for you'?
If the only laptop you have is the laptop who have made you earn your doctorate, can you say that laptop is just 'a waste of time'?

You can see here that the question of whether reading is still relevant or not,
is irrelevant in the first place.

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