Reading Habits Among Students in the Digital Era

Reading has a significant number of benefits and the effects of reading practice have been proven in most developed countries. The revolution of technology plays a significant role of unpredictable changes and pervasive effect that has transformed the society nowadays. Indeed, it can fundamentally change the reading habits and indirectly boost efforts in maintaining lifelong reading since Malaysia is now moving towards Vision 2020. Thus, the rapid development and demands of the technology has reinforced the challenges of making reading habits consistent and grows intensively. This study sought to identify and measure the reading habits among students which are their trends and behaviours toward reading that reflect on the impact of digital sources made available through the Internet. This study was conducted in Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak, limit to Semester One students, aged between 17-21 years by using a survey method involving 2340 from 10060 diploma students with the questionnaire as the research instrument. The random sampling for the students is involving 14 faculties in UiTM Sarawak branch. Taken together, QR code has been used as an initiative platform in order to conduct and monitor the survey efficiently. Data analyses were collected using Google Sheet and the study found that majority of the students (44%) like reading on websites compared to other choices such as print books, e-books, magazines, comics, novel and newspaper. Fiction is the most preferred type of literature read by 68% the students, followed by non-fiction (32%). The findings also found that majority of the students (49%) preferred reading from their mobile phone, whereas others preferred reading from a print book (44%) and reading from a computer (7%). Findings of the study revealed that the rise of information and technology has extensively changes the trends and behaviors of the student’s reading habits, which slowly moving away from printed books to online source materials.