In a More Digital Direction: Serving Teens with E-Readers

E-book adoption among teens has been found to trail that of all other reader age groups. (1) Just two years ago, most of the teens I knew would dig in their heels at the thought of abandoning their dog-eared paperbacks for e-books. (2) But, in recent months, an unprecedented number of young people at my high school have acquired e-readers, both dedicated devices and multifunction tablets. Their individual experiences showcase some of the new opportunities for young adult librarians to offer advice on how to get and use a range of digital content. Natasha, eighteen, wanted a device that offered her mobile accessibility that she could take to college next year. She chose a Nook Tablet, and the same sort of low-cost, full-featured Android-fueled tablets were in many of my students' stockings. The Pew Internet and American Life Project announced in January that tablet and e-book reader ownership nearly doubled over the holidays. (3) She appreciates both the lightweight hardware and the ability to carry hundreds of books at once, collecting dozens of games and several dictionaries in addition to an extensive digital library. "Pretty much all the books I own in print, I got in e-books," Natasha said. She feels one form does not supplant the other. "I was anti-Kindles and Nooks until I took one on loan from the library," said Emily, seventeen. But she said it was expanded digital content that inspired her to use her savings to buy a 3G Kindle. She said she had browsed through hundreds of books of Amazon, but noticed that some of the titles she was most interested in were only available for the Kindle. She chose a discounted model with "special offers," a rolling screen saver she describes as advertising "vacations and other things I'm not interested in. I ignore it. " Emily is enthusiastic about the number of free books available for her to read. The variable quality of many of the free and low-cost titles is a concern that has been likened to an e-book equivalent of e-mail spam. (4) While Emily is aware many authors with Kindle books are self-published, "finding something not everyone's reading" is part of the attraction of reading e-books. She has begun a correspondence with one author in Arizona who has given her an inside scoop on the next release in a series she particularly enjoyed. She doesn't think that would happen with a traditionally published writer. Like Emily, seventeen-year-old Caitie checked out an eInk Nook from the school library last year. After reading a digital edition of a childhood favorite, Little Women, she asked her parents for an e-reader for Christmas, not suspecting they had already purchased one for her, a HipStreet model that reads both Kindle and Nook files. Caitie uses both Amazon's and Barnes and Noble's online storefronts to locate reading material. She tends toward "any book I can get for free," she said emphatically. "I don't buy them. " Christian, a junior, said that he likes his Kindle "when I don't have time to buy other books. It's easier. " Christian points out that many current bestsellers are less expensive in an electronic format and that the recent Stephen King titles he's read have been downright unwieldy in print. He theorized that most of the money goes to physically printing the book, which he saw as an unnecessary step. Whether you personally feel e-books are an improvement or a degradation of the print reading experience, e-reader adoption is a harbinger of changing habits, a shift toward devices centered on seamless, wireless media consumption. Emily said that since she got her ereader, "I haven't read anything in print. " And other students, particularly those with tablet devices, report reaching for their laptops less. "The Web surfing is flawless," said Natasha of using her Nook Tablet to access the Internet. "It's like being on your computer. Actually, you don't need a computer. " Christian called into question the limitations of the single-function e-readers. …