Finally, something good to talk about amid all the gloom and doom. According to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), literary reading, defined as "novels, short stories, poems, or plays in print or online," has gone up after declining steadily since 1982, when the NEA first began its survey. The jump is only 3.5% overall-from 46.7% to 50.2%-but the implications are huge. Until now, the youngest adults, those 18-24 years old, appeared to be giving up reading in droves, favoring other pastimes. That cohort has had the steepest decline of any group over the four previous surveys. In 2002 alone, 18- to 24-year-olds showed a 10.5% decline; now 51.7% say they have read a novel, or other literature, in the past 12 months, compared to 42.8% in 2002. It's the sharpest rise among all adults.
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