A “Millenial” Dilemma: Source Material or Adaptation

           We are in a time where many books, comics, and video games are adapted into movies
or TV series thanks to the technological advancements paving the way into many possibilities
and increasing these mediums’ popularity. We’ve seen J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous book
series Lord of the Rings and many of the franchises of comic book
publishers Marvel and DC receiving screened adaptations that grossed hundreds of million
dollars worldwide. In this “Digital Era”, where today's teenagers use and know the technology
more than anyone else, this question comes to mind: “Do teenagers prefer consuming the
source material or watching the screened adaptations?” While there is a consensus that teens
don't read much, the answer to that question will surprise you.

 As a teenager, I can say that while visual mediums appeal to us more than written mediums,
many of us enjoy both. Screened versions provide us an alternative perspective as to how the
world and the characters of a book could be visualized. The characters, the world, the
interactions; they all come to life. Hence, we teenagers are keener on watching than reading.

 But, this is not to say we don't read, many of us are intrigued to read because of the visual
mediums. Visual mediums introduced us to many book series. Many of us took reading as a
habit thanks to these screened versions and comparing both the source material and the
adaptation is a very engaging activity. Thanks to the accessibility the Internet brought many
of us can store and read many books on our phones. Also, according to a survey made by GfK
among 17 countries and 22,000+ internet users older than 15, its result shows that participants
that read every day between ages 15-19 are more than other age groups.1

 Of course, these results don't exactly tell us that teens prefer reading over watching
adaptations in general. Because of our easygoing and lazy nature and the time we grew up in,
the majority of teenagers prefer watching more, even though we seem to read a lot. ++++
Connect these please

 When it comes to reading comics or books, we tend to read comics more than we read books
that range from hundreds of pages. They contain less text, are vibrant and colorful, and easy
to consume. That's also one of the reasons why comic book adaptations are very popular as
well.

 In essence, while it's the truth that teenagers do read much more than expected, it's an
undeniable truth that they prefer screened versions over the source materials. But who knows,
the tides may change in the following years.
Good work…

1: https://www.gfk.com/fileadmin/user_upload/country_one_pager/NL/documents/Global-GfK-survey_Frequency-reading-books_2017.pdf