Chart of the Day: The Death of Print

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Here’s a BLS chart that shows how much we spend on reading-related materials. But what does it mean? It’s true that young folks spend less on reading material than anyone else, but that’s mostly because of their complete non-interest in dead-tree magazines and newspapers. Also, presumably, because young folks spend less on everything than prosperous older folks.

But if you add up the books + e-readers category, young folks are spending nearly as much as anyone else. It’s just not clear what they’re reading. E-books? Longform articles? Blogs? TMZ? Hard to say. Then again, it’s not clear what the older folks are reading either. It may be on paper, but it’s probably not Shakespeare for the most part.

In any case, this shows fairly dramatically that print is dying. As we all know by now, young folks mostly prefer digital. And so do plenty of non-young folks like me. I occasionally have to read a print book, but I’m annoyed whenever it happens.