High school readers migrating to online offerings

As technology increases and the schedules of students are filled up, students are changing the ways they spend their extra time. One example of this shift is instead of reading physical books, they go on social media because there isn’t much time for high school students to sit down and read a book.  

“High school students don’t check out books nearly as much as junior high students because they have much less time,” media specialist Abby Hendrickson said.  

Although high school students don’t read much at the beginning of the year they still check out some books because of encouragement from their English teachers. “We currently have 1,317 books checked out.  That does not include textbooks,” Hendrickson said. Currently, Cedar Falls High School has about 1,120 students, meaning on average each student has 1.17 books checked out,” Hendrickson said. “On average we have about 15 books checked out every day.”

Even though technology has increased and more and more books are being read online, the high school students don’t seem to like reading online. “I like the feeling of having a physical book in my hand and being able to flip pages,” sophomore Suzane Thapaliya said. “I also don’t like reading online because it strains my eyes.”  

But some have embraced the advantages of online reading. “I can do a lot more with the font and brightness and the size, so I prefer the online books,” Hendrickson said.