iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us

by Jean M. Twenge

The decline in reading creates some distinct challenges for a wide swath of concerned elders, including parents, educators, and publishing companies. For example, how are students who rarely read books going to digest an eight-hundred-page college textbook? Most faculty report that their students simply don’t read the textbook, even if it’s required. Many publishers are moving toward more interactive ebooks to try to keep students engaged. As a university faculty member and the author or coauthor of three college textbooks, I think this needs to go even further. iGen’ers need textbooks that include interactive activities such as video sharing and questionnaires, but they also need books that are shorter in length and more conversational in their writing style. They are coming to college with much less experience reading, so we have to meet them where they are, while still teaching them what they need to know. That might mean leaving behind some detail, but that’s better than students’ not cracking the book at all.