Books? -- TV -- Video Games - Tik Tok (unsocial nettwerk)?

I want to know was there ever a really big book reading audience?  How big was it? How big was the population (in the US) which read books regularly.  

In my life the local library always played a big role.  In both communities I lived in during the school year and in the summer regular trips to the library were a part of life, a fun place to go.  You could legally browse books. In fact that was the point

My children and I have kept up the tradition, our whole lives, ..... until my older

daughter reached puberty.  blah.  What happened?   Well? Maybe it is a natural progression???   

A hundred years ago Ernest Hemingway was a rock star.  Seriously.  His support acts were F Scott Fitzgerald and that Paris crowd.   They were really the sh... about town and the US.  

But by the 50s when Hemingway stopped publishing the golden age of Television had started.   Did TV really eclipse books?  Did everyone suddenly move over from books to watch television?  Or did the people who watched TV ever read books? Or did the people who read books stop reading books but also watched TV? Wasnt there, couldnt there have been space for both?   

Suddenly it started when I was growing up, this thing called video games came along.  I didnt get hooked because video games either cost a lot of quarters to play, that limited me usually to three games, or your parents had to buy you some little gameboy console as big as a big calculator.  I never got one.  I would have been addicted if I had had one. I spent a weekend at my cousins once and I couldnt get off their football gameboy game all weekend.  It was so wonderful.  

But did I stop reading books? Well I am not a good example. I couldnt get addicted because of lack of money, but NO, I did not stop reading books.  Other people could play video games endlessly.  By the 90s video games were serious time consumers and BIG, much bigger than when I was doing pac man in the 80s.  That s the time people who are fathers now spent their time as a nerd addicted to video games.   

Did the sale of books go down?   

Then we have to skip twenty years to the second decade of the 2000s, even mid 2010 - 2020 to see the next trend coming in.  Social networking and scrolling.  

Has social networks, scrolling networks, like Tik Tok permanently killed reading books which started dying from the onset of TV?   Are people still reading books? Or does the population have no cross over? In other words those who watch Tik Tok dont read books and vice versa.  

The problem is teenagers.  Teenagers start reading books.  Are they now lost to Tik tok?  I have to sadly add that while I only have anecdotal evidence which isnt worth much, my teen ager has stopped reading books.  Largely, I have to say, due to her addiction to Tik Tok and other short videos on internet. And still video games. 

You can blame me and say, well why dont you limit her phone, apps use?  Yes, I would have liked to and actually my wife did, but it didnt work. Our daughter usually found a way around the time limits.  Now all we can say is "time to shut it down."   "10pm, turn it off, time to get ready for bed." But it is self administered. Those people who say control it better.... it is difficult and there are other variables.  Ie, she can say she is doing homework.  Since a lot of the homework these days is done onliine, how can I doubt her?   So I cant take her phone away.  I wish we could put her on the app time limit.  But I am afraid to ask my wife to do that as she will just blow her top at me that we already tried that and I wasnt in favor of it or didnt care.  Which isnt true, I just was a bit oblivious at the time to the whole picture.  

Anyway, aside from that anecdote, I really want to know if the age group which

would be affected by all these new diversions, from TV to video games to apps, are they really leaving book reading? Were they ever there? Former president George W Bush never read books by his own account when he was growing up.  Or is the population always the same.  I am talking about teenagers now.  Or are they able to split their time properly between books and game addiction?    

These are the statistics, the charts I want to see.  For teenagers.   

Easter time.  Happy Easter. 

First I listened to an album just coming out at this time.  Its a cover of Slayer tracks done... slower.  I will get it for sale. And then when I was making corrections I listened to an old classic rock out. One of the best live Jams ever made.  Dark Star, on LIVE DEAD lp.  

15 year olds su... are not liked

 

Nobody likes 15 year olds.  A lot of people even hate them.  They still need help and guidance. 

When I was in my 20s and going to clubs with my mate, he told me a story that just happened.  He was sitting talking to a girl and finally he asked her how old she was and she said she was 15.  He ran away.  VERY quickly.  

Older people in clubs and meeting places dont like 15 year olds because they are dangerous.  Jailbait.  Stay away.  If you are a pedofile and like them, you still stay away from them. Pedofiles stay at home and just look at pictures, they dont often have physical contact, but you should not quote me on that (I am definitely not an expert on pedofiles).  Any and every male knows that the fastest way to get into trouble is to even walk within ten feet of a fifteen year old in a club.  "Can I buy you a drink?"   "Yes, sure but I cant drink, I am 15 years old"  "Fine, I ll get you a coca cola and I will never see you again," is the best answer.   Males in their twenties, unless you are R Kelley, stay away from mid teen girls.  Why are they even in clubs?  Well in Europe I guess they are allowed to be.  Or maybe all ages places, but if you are in your twenties, especially a male, but even a female, run away from them.  

Even older teenagers dont like 15 year olds.   If a couple older teen agers want to go to a coffee bar, but there are 15 year olds, they will say icily, "Lets not go there, there are 15 year olds there. I d rather stay away from them."  If 15 year olds frequent a place, all others stay away. Or sit on the other side of the room from them.  

And even kids younger than 15 stay away from them. "They think they are so cool, I dont want to go in there with them, lets stay away."  Nobody wants to be around them.  

15 year olds are on the cusp of both worlds and they mess it up in both of them.  They dont want to be kids anymore, but they dont understand what it is to be an adult.  They think they are adult or they want to be adults, but they are not. They are 15.   15 isnt even 17 and even 17 is young.  15 isnt 12 years old or even 13 and 13 used to be the age that girls could get married or "given away" in other traditonal societies.  But not anymore.  13 year olds have slipped back down to the pre teen group even though they are teen and 15 year olds have taken the place of the once marriageable 13 year old.  

But 15 is older than 13 and 13 year olds are young and small compared to 15 year olds.  15 year olds are bigger.  A lot of them CAN pass as adults if they watch some turd on instagram about how to put on make up and look older blah blah blah.   

And that is the problem.  

15 year olds want to get into being an adult.  So they will do anything, be more crazy, try to act way more mature than they are and just try to be what they think being an adult is.  But they dont know. And they mess it up. They go too far and they take it too far.  And that makes them dangerous, and everyone knows that except the 15 year olds. Stalkers and pedofiles know it.   The mid teenagers  just say to themselves, "I am an adult, I can do that."  But the thing is real adults wont do those things.  They will stop and think about what is being asked and ask themselves, "Do I really want to do that?  Should I be doing that?"   See 15 year olds dont ask themselves that question, they just dive into it and they think they are cool and adult like because they are going for it.  

But no.  

15 year olds are dangerous to others and to themselves.  Because the frontal cortex is not asking the questions, it is not assessing the risk.  It just runs in and jumps.  Usually off a very high building.  

If you have 15 year olds in your house, my take is that they still need coaching. They still need guidance from the parent, although they will not ask for it and they will hate the parent for offering it.  They need it.  You are going to have to bite your lip and tell them, that is not a good thing to be doing. I think you are going too far.  See, I know you are 15 and that is getting older, but it isnt there yet and you still need some guidance from us even though you dont want it. Sorry, sometimes we are going to say things you dont like and which will make you feel like you are a stupid kid, but yes, we have to tell you and instruct still, because, you are just 15 and we dont want you getting involved with R. Kelley and all the R. Kelleys who are still out there.