With more people turning to read books online or use audiobooks, the significance of libraries is diminishing. There is a lack of reading physical books and people are turning towards apps, websites, and other sources to read online instead of using traditional methods. Using these online documents and websites instead of the libraries in our community is rapidly causing them to turn to finding other ways to remain significant. 

I believe that people should return to reading physical books and stop using audiobooks and other online media to take their place. With more and more people straying away from traditional ways of reading, libraries have been turning to other methods to regain significance in communities. By creating study rooms and making it so that people can check out things like games and CDs, libraries aren’t what they used to be. 

Moving to online media has many negative impacts on mental health too, and is very different compared to physical books. Online resources aren’t the same as having the real copy that you can keep forever and being able to flip through the paper pages. We as a community should turn back to paper books instead of using the internet or Kindles, and bring back what libraries used to be.

According to Pew Research Center, less than 75% of people have read a book in the last year, and the percentage of people doing so through physical books is decreasing quickly. Using online copies of books is far worse for health than paper copies. Paper copies help people increase their attention spans, and are much better for our dopamine-addicted brains. We as a community need to change the increasing irrelevance of libraries and bring back what they used to be; a place to read paper books. 

According to The Science Survey, since 2009 less and less libraries have been built because of the lack of physical books being read, and the increase in demand for online copies. Libraries have been a standard in most communities around the world, but they’re starting to die out and lose meaning. Between 2010 and 2018, library use has fallen over 30%, and have started to turn digital. This is a result of the digital age, and how it has changed our approach to obtaining information and learning. This decrease in local libraries is bad for our communities. As well as this, the increase in using digital means and media to obtain the information is causing people to have harder times with their memory, and diminishing their ability to digest longer pieces of information and writing. 

Moving back to physical media has benefits for everyone, we can bring back the original purpose of libraries: the sense of community that comes with it, and bring back more jobs to librarians. No amount of technological innovation can replace the feeling of having a real book in your hands and flipping through the pages. As explained by Psychology Today, if we go back to paper books and printed media, it would help with memory, boosting vocabulary, and comprehensive reading. This is why we need to move back to physical media as a collective.

With more people turning to reading books online or using audiobooks, we as a community need to turn back to paper books and bring back the significance of libraries. Transitioning to digital media causes negative side effects to health, like shorter attention spans and an inability to digest information in larger quantities. Moving back to physical books is important for our community, and we can do this by bringing back standard libraries.