Books in the Time of Screens: The Reading Habits of Slovenian Students

Abstract

This research paper brings up the question of recreational reading habits among the generation of university students that were born after 1990 and grew up in a digital environment. The paper focuses on their self-reported reading habits. The students belong to two disciplinary domains (humanities and social sciences) at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. A significant number of them were pre-service teachers. The research was conducted on a non-random sample of 429 students. Data were gathered using a printed questionnaire that included assessment scales of students' reading habits. These data were compared with data gathered in the online reading habits survey of the general Slovenian population that took place in autumn 2019 on a sample of 1000 participants, demographically representing Slovene general population. The key finding was that university students read more than members of the general population do, but still less than would be expected of future educators who will introduce book reading to pupils as the number of non-readers in student population was higher than expected. In addition, the data revealed that practically all students were able to read in at least one foreign language (predominantly in English) what is significantly higher than in general population. The paper indicates a few reasons for such outcomes and addresses the question of why recreational book reading matters in educational settings.