‘Reading Is a Dying Hobby in This Multimedia Age.’ Is This...

4. ‘Reading is a dying hobby in this multimedia age.’ Is this true? Reading as a pastime has been likened to an endangered animal facing extinction from the threat of the poachers — in this case, the multimedia age. It has been said that reading as a hobby is gradually losing its appeal as opposed to Internet gaming, blogging (writing an online diary), listening to podcasts and ipods and watching popular drama series on television. Evidently, many more forms of recreation and leisure are rising up from the multimedia sector and threaten to replace reading as a hobby in this age. Today, one of the strongest competitors of reading is the Internet. With its plethora of easily accessible information, the Internet easily outshines reading†¦show more content†¦One of the reasons why people prefer the â€Å"telly† over books is that people can see the characters in a story coming to life through dramatisation. In contrast, reading limits you to imagining the whole scene in your head. Moreover, most people are too busy to devote a whole afternoon to finish reading a novel. They prefer to watch a movie about the same story and finish it in just two hours. Therefore, reading as a hobby is gradually becoming a lost art in these days of the age of multimedia. Little handheld gadgets that fit nicely into pockets and small bags — mobile phones and ipods — are much more popular than reading nowadays. With mobile phones going 3G and music on the go with ipods, it is not difficult to see why reading is becoming obsolete in the lives of people today. In the past, reading was the only pastime for most people because all they could carry around were books. Now, mobile phones and ipods, which weigh much less than books and occupy less space, are the new obsessions of human beings. A very prominent change is observed among school children: more students are being caught in class using mobile phones and listening to ipods during lessons than being nabbed red-handed reading a romance novel during chemistry class. Obviously, reading is a dying pastime in today’s society. On the other hand, reading is still something that people enjoy doing, even in today’s context. Given the prowess of the Internet, global and regional