Extinction of a Sacred Place

Extinction of a Sacred Place

       Bookstores have always been sacred places. There is something so distinctive about the smell and atmosphere of them that people seem to forget in today's age of iBooks and Kindle. As bookstores continue to lose business in this world of rampant technology, their value to today's youth becomes even more apparent.
       E-reading devices have steadily increased their presence in quotidian life, much at the expense of physical bookstores. It is no secret that for years, while companies like Amazon and Apple have amassed a devoted following, bookstores and their relevance have been dwindling away. As Open Education Database reported, there was a 12.2% drop in the number of bookstores in the US between 1997 and 2002, and “the number of independent bookstores dropped from 2,400 to 1,900 between 2002 and 2011” (OEDb 2012). Meanwhile, e-book sales spiked: they “rose by 210% and comprised 30% of all sales of adult fiction” between 2010 and 2011. Amazon alone purportedly sold 22.6% of books in 2011 (OEDb 2012). Statistics like these prove e-stores and e-books are slowly but surely taking over the hardcopy book industry. Many consumers would rather carry a slim device than unwieldy books and find e-books in mere seconds than ‘waste’ hours in a store. This shift from paper to screen reflects society’s constant acceleration that necessitates portability and practicality, leaving little to no time to pause and ruminate. If this current trend continues, Americans may soon lose one of the most enriching and precious centers of our society.
       Bookstores offer what phones, tablets, computers, and cyberspace cannot. This makes them invaluable in a world where teens spend nine hours a day on social media (CNN 2015), which the Child Mind Institute describes as “promoting anxiety and lowering self esteem” (Ehmke 2016). Shop owner Wendy Welch noticed bookstores have the complete opposite effect: visitor’s “expressions soften, steps slow, eyes stop darting” (Welch 2012). They provide a quiet, enriching labyrinth in which people can disappear and be at peace, far removed from their worries. They represent appreciating the present and paying attention to the tactile world, a need not fulfilled by the Internet or any portable device. They foster tranquility and curiosity, and are a more intimate way of “falling down a rabbit hole” of learning and discovery than any online site. Like the Internet, they encapsulate the entire social, political, cultural history of the world, but in a much safer space. They are not simply things of beauty as Buzzfeed’s “19 Beautiful Bookstores You Need to Visit in America” implies by highlighting their appearances with well-lit images - they are escapes, safe havens, deeply personal experiences. Teenagers and young adults will never benefit from the true value of bookstores if their only recognized worth lies in how aesthetically pleasing they are on someone’s Instagram.
       In the new generation, technology is an extension of the hand. However, phones are nowhere to be found in a bookstore, where visitors’ eyes are wide and wandering. With the sale of e-books reaching an all-time high, today’s youth no longer remembers what it feels like to lose oneself in a sea of palpable stories and information; instead, they’re lost in a sea of bright and stressful screens. If Americans can once again realize the significance of bookstores, they may find that space of peaceful growth before it is too late.