2: SLOW READING AND DEEP THINKING

[1] Data regarding Americans’ use of time for the years 2003–2014 can be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “American Time Use Survey,” accessed February 24, 2016, www.bls.gov/tus/. There have been numerous other studies over the past decade with similar findings. Statistics in this book are from studies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the National Education Association, cited by Michael Harris in his book The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (New York: Current, 2014). It should also be noted here that some suggest that activity on the Internet constitutes reading, and as such it is not being taken into account in these kinds of statistics.

[2] See, for example, Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (New York: Penguin, 2008); and Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 107, no. 2 (2008), 89–94.

[3] Maryanne Wolf, “Our ‘Deep Reading’ Brain: Its Digital Evolution Poses Questions,” Summer 2010, accessed September 1, 2015, at http://niemanreports.org/articles/our-deep-reading-brain-its-digital-evolution-poses-questions/.

[4] Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” 89.

[5] See C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison, Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014).

[6] For an overview of the various facets of this loose group of organizations, see www.slowmovement.com/aboutus.php, accessed September 1, 2015.

[7] David Mikics, Slow Reading in a Hurried Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), 6.

[8] Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960), 30.

[9] Thomas Newkirk, The Art of Slow Reading: Six Time-Honored Practices for Engagement (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011), 6.

[10] C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: University Press, 1961), 141.

[11] Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994), 75.

[12] According to a 2012 survey by the Pew Research Center, 58 percent of Millennials say they cannot be certain that God exists, as opposed to 69 percent of Gen-Xers and 73 percent of baby boomers. For the full study, see “Millennials in Adulthood,” March 7, 2014, www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/.