Parents struggle and fight with their kids every day about how much time they spend playing with electronics. Video games to cell phones to iPods, our kids are constantly plugged in. We worry about how much time they are spending plugged in and wonder what it’s going to do to them or affect them. Since the launch of the Kindle and iPad among others, there is a whole new way to get plugged in and kids are excited about it. Scholastic recently did a study to see what kids in different age groups thought about reading in general and what they think about the new electronic reading devices.

In the study done by Scholastic, they have found that reading for fun when concerning children greatly decreases as they get older. The study showed that it was even more of a decrease for boys than for girls. Over half of the girls questioned said that they felt reading for fun was very important while less than 40 percent of boys felt that it was important. Kids also argued that they do read on a regular basis as they consider reading forum posts and texts a reading activity. Many parents would strongly disagree.

Though the interest of reading for fun just doesn’t seem to be there for our youth, the new e-book products on the market have gotten kids excited about reading again. While it will never replace the classic style of reading that I prefer myself, at least this is a start at re-inspiring older kids back into reading. There are and will be many books available to these devices and why not? There are communities out there of people who have been enjoying e-books online for quite some time now and considered to be just as good.

While there are many different routs a parent can take to get their kids into reading, this one sounds like a lot of fun to me. I’m thinking that there might be a couple Kindles under the Christmas tree to pass around this season and I hope that Santa is nice enough to bring one for me too. As a parent what are your views on kids using the iPad and Kindle for reading their favorite books? Do you think that it is an okay substitute for the real thing? Will you put restrictions on it as you would any other electronic device?