JAM: 1 in 5 kids would be 'embarrassed' by this.

By JAMILA RIZVI

A 2012 survey of more than 21,000 children has reveled that almost a fifth of them would be ‘embarrassed’ if a friend saw them reading a book.

More than half said that they preferred to watch TV.

Let’s take a moment to ponder that fact, shall we?

Reading – perhaps the most truly rewarding of all private pursuits (keep it clean, friends) – is no longer an acceptable life choice.

When I was a kid, reading was absolutely my favourite thing to do. It was books that allowed my imagination to soar in a way that drama played out on a screen could never do.

This is because books don’t give you all the information. Instead, they rely on your own creativity and consciousness to fill in the blanks and interpret someone else’s imagined world, as you want it to be.

I still love books. And I’m a big believer that you have to consume some trash along with your classics. After all, how else would you know the difference?

But there is one genre that I truly hate. And that, is the stupid, stupid vampires.

I am sure that in hundreds of years’ time, anthropologists will study generations Y and Z.

In digital lectures – where the professor appears via hologram and students absorb information by scanning barcodes with the computers embedded in their wrists – and they will wonder what we were like and what made us tick.

The teacher will ask, through some kind of yet-to-be-invented digital telepathy, “students, what is distinctive about the made-for-film, reading material of these generations that sets them apart from those who came before?”

And the answer will be: vampires.

I simply do not understand why we are teaching our young women that penultimate happiness is achieved by relinquishing your humanity and hooking up with irrationally violent men, who want to suck your blood?

When you’re a pre-teen or teenage girl and navigating the terror that is puberty, desperately hoping boys will like you, trying to find a crowd you fit in with and learning to love your mum, then irrationally hate her (and then love her again) – on-screen vampires do not help.

But the characters in our books do.

The books I read as a child and as a teenager, have helped me define who I am as an adult. They taught me about real friendship, about family, about success and about loss. They taught me the power of acceptance and the importance of empathy. They taught me how to be confident. They taught me how to love.

And to think that the generation, which follows mine is ashamed to be introduced to characters like Matilda, or Josephine Alibrandi, or Elizabeth Bennett, or Scarlett O’Hara, or Jo March or Jane Eyre – is a tragedy.

Publishing giant Penguin recently released their own history in the form of a signature orange and white paperback. They introduced the little book with this brief introduction:

”This is a book about the most advanced form of entertainment ever. You can pause it at any time. Rewind and replay it if you miss a bit … It’ll fit in your pocket. It’s interactive … It’s pretty cheap. It’s completely free to share. And it lasts a lifetime. This is a book about books.”

I truly hope that the 21,000 children who are surveyed next time around, do a little reading before they answer the question about books.

This column first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine and has been republished with full permission.

Do your kids read much? Or is it all about the screen time?