So is it really truely true that no one reads any more? If so, who's reading them the internet?

For the third time this month, someone informed me that "No one reads any more," because "they're online instead or watching trash TV" and anyway, "Nobody reads books any more, for sure." How do they know? "Everybody knows that." And if book sales seem large, it's purely caused by the Left Behind series and Harry Potter.

These were three different people, by the way.

Does anyone like, perhaps, misia know the facts on the matter? Is it true that the US or world population reads less than they did, say, twenty years ago? Or fifty? Have literacy rates declined, stayed the same, or gone up? Have any studies been done that are more rigorous than asking people whether they read "literature" as defined as "novels, poetry, and plays?" What about studies asking a large number of randomly selected people in defined age groups what they have read over the last month or year, including books and magazines read online? Charts of book sales over long periods?

Any pointers?

I mean, maybe it is true that reading has been steadily declining since some Golden Age, but I'd at least like to know when that Golden Age was.

So is it really truely true that no one reads any more? If so, who's reading them the internet?

For the third time this month, someone informed me that "No one reads any more," because "they're online instead or watching trash TV" and anyway, "Nobody reads books any more, for sure." How do they know? "Everybody knows that." And if book sales seem large, it's purely caused by the Left Behind series and Harry Potter.

These were three different people, by the way.

Does anyone like, perhaps, misia know the facts on the matter? Is it true that the US or world population reads less than they did, say, twenty years ago? Or fifty? Have literacy rates declined, stayed the same, or gone up? Have any studies been done that are more rigorous than asking people whether they read "literature" as defined as "novels, poetry, and plays?" What about studies asking a large number of randomly selected people in defined age groups what they have read over the last month or year, including books and magazines read online? Charts of book sales over long periods?

Any pointers?

I mean, maybe it is true that reading has been steadily declining since some Golden Age, but I'd at least like to know when that Golden Age was.