There’s a very common practice I’ve noticed nowadays where if someone is looking for a book to read, their first instinct is to turn to Facebook and post a status that reads along the lines of, “I’m looking for something new to read. What do you recommend?” Social media has not just become a way of connecting people, but brain storming as well. This is helping to boost readership, not just among children, but people across the board. How can this be? According to an article in The Bookseller, Dan Martin states, “many having acted--and spent money--as a result of recommendations made across the social networks. One crucial factor is that social media is a communications mechanism in which you can have a constructive dialogue with people” (Martin, 2010) .
The website GoodReads took this aspect of social media one step further. With over five million members, the website specializes in everything book-related, from recommendations, personal reviews, queues and bibliographies, to even author bios, interviews, and blogs (Mulvihill, 2011) . By making the website a center for literature, it becomes a promotion for reading in all aspects. One does not even have to ask the question, “What are you reading?” A member can click on a friend’s profile and see what they have read, what they thought of it, and if there are any other books by that specific author.
Writers have also started using social media to promote their work in a marketing aspect. From My Space to Facebook, authors are getting their work out to the public (and I would be a liar if I said I didn’t use this practice myself). Robert Patterson took this opportunity by starting a campaign to get children to read and spread the word on the interactive website for CNN. Within a day his campaign’s launch, it had over 23,000 supporters on the site alone (Donahue, 2011) .
While social media may be keeping children (and people in general) on the computer longer, it has become a great tool for helping to promote a classic, and sometimes rare, type of recreation.
