Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are those born roughly during the early 1980s to the early 2000s. They are digital natives, who grew up surrounded by much of the technology that people like me (baby boomers) have encountered, learned and adapted to during our lives: digital clocks, computers, cell phones. . . .
Conventional wisdom has held that Millennials don’t read books in print as much as they prefer reading and doing research online. However, Pew Research Center Internet Project report in September 2014 found that Millennials are reading as much as older adults, and are even more likely to have read a book in the past 12 months, and do use libraries for information not found on the internet.
One thing this tells me is to not make assumptions about people, and specifically library users, based on their age and what generation they belong to. As an aside, remember that libraries aren’t just books, they are sources of information, no matter what the format. So don’t ever think that a certain age group isn’t interested in the library. We have, or at least, should have, something for everyone. Sometimes we have to let them know!
For further reading:
- Millennials and Reading
- Pew Report Finds Millennials Are Readers, Library Users
- Younger Americans and Public Libraries
A Life in Libraries 
My daughter, b. 1997, devours books. Almost all digitally (Kindle). Given her druthers on the weekend, she’d read for 15 hours each day…
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If she wants to read all day, that’s a good thing! Oh, except, I suppose there’s other things you might want her to do–like help out around the house? 🙂
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