Boredom? Calm? Excitement? Reading habits of Szeged high school students and their changes over a decade

Abstract

Reading habits are constantly changing in terms of quantity, quality and in terms of the use of tools. In the last decade or so, there have been many changes that have not left this area untouched, while the strategic goal has remained the same: to educate people to become readers.

In 2011, as the library science group of the Institute of Cultural Studies of the University of Szeged, we conducted a reading survey among upper secondary and secondary school students in Szeged as the first step in a trend study. The questionnaire was updated and transferred to an online platform, and our measurements were repeated in 2022. From this, we would now like to summarise our findings for Szeged secondary school students. The secondary school students surveyed in 2011 – based on popular generational theory – were the last representatives of the Generation Y, while the young people we are now interviewing belong to Generation Z. However, we hypothesise that it is not the generational change per se, but rather the technological development and the period of quarantine and online education that have left their mark on the leisure, library and reading habits and preferences of this age group.

Our research aims to explore how young people spend their free time, how much time they spend online, what they read, when and on what devices, whether they go to the library and how they perceive the role of this type of institution, and to compare this with the results of the 2011 survey.