Are books becoming obsolete?

With today's expansion of mass electronic media, traditional information devices (like books and newspapers), are slowly, but steadily falling in use. Today's young adults and kids are raised in society where reading books is becoming boring and unnecessary, while visual media (like movies, TV, news) is on the rise. This outcome was probably unevitable, given the very nature of today's internet and technologies, yet it's making a bad public image of today's teenagers with older adults.

But is it our fault, that books are becoming history?

I love books. Without books, their stories, and their philosophical edge, i wouldn't be the person I am today; yet, I am immersing myself in their yellowy pages less and less. I know that and I am ashamed; but still, I am too lazy to read them.

From the age of four, I read books. They were children's books at the very first; I pointed with my little fingers on words and read them letter by letter, until those became known to me and I began to read fluently (or at least for a five-year old). I loved mainly encyclopedies at that age; I was a very curious kid, eager to learn about mysteries of the world, knowing types of stones, or the capital cities of many countries.

That, sadly, was the time of my greatest intelectual upswing, and by the age of ten, my reading enthusiasm slowly began to fade.

Now, at age of seventeen, I am not reading anything large periods of time, with occasional short books when I have the mood. Why? Because of the Internet and movies. Immediate access to all kinds of newest information and visual elaboration of the once famous book stories is much easier to consume than huge paragraphs of text.

That's why YouTube or TV and its content creators are so popular – people are accustomed to effortlessly look at something presented to them, instead of making the effort to read a visually boring text. And even if I hate this attitude towards laziness, I am slowly succumbing to it as well.

And I am not even the worst example of people not reading books. Many, many people are reading books only if it's Harry Potter, or if they must because of their homework. Reading books is slowly becoming a nerdy thing, something, that only the less sociable, smart people do to spend their time.

Ok, it's probably not that bad, yet. Reading paper books is a thing deeply rooted in our society and it will take probably many years before it disappears. Well, maybe not so many – today's technological progress is going forward faster and faster each year.

Even though I hate the idea of books vanishing from our scope, it might not necessarily be a bad thing. People hate change from the old ways – I, in the end, do too. But the most important things books offer, information and stories, will never end; human fantasy will still prevail, only in different forms and means of consuming it. It might just be a technological development; books being only the first steps of entertainment perceiving.

Conclusion

So, in the end, I do not like the idea of books being less and less common, but I am seeing on myself and others, that it is pretty much already happening; and we probably won't do anything about it. It's just the way of evolution.

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