Why Baby Boomers Love the Kindle—and Millennials Don’t
Atlanta in her early 50s, is a Kindle evangelist. She initially bought hers in 2012, as a gift for her middle-school-aged children. After the device had collected dust for two years, Strull brought it to the beach on a whim.
She was hooked, especially since the Kindle’s waterproof “pages" wouldn’t disintegrate if her soggy kids dripped on them. Once Strull became a Kindle convert, she purchased one for her parents, now in their mid-eighties, who she says love it and heavily rely on it. “When my mother wakes up in the middle of the night, she uses her e-reader," Strull said.
Since it lights itself, the Kindle doesn’t disturb her father’s sleep. Her kids don’t understand. “To this day," she said, her now-high school- and college-age children “refuse to read a book on an e-reader." I can relate.
I’ve tried a Kindle, but always miss the tactility of hardcovers or paperbacks. I love being able to scribble notes in the margins or fold over particularly captivating pages so I can revisit them later. Call me a Luddite, but the thought of my great-great-grandchild picking up my dog-eared and marked-up copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift from the Sea" brings me great joy.
I don’t think that kid will ever find my equally loved copy of Heather Lende’s “Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer" in the magnetic dust of my long-dead Kindle. Devin Smith, 26, a marketing and public relations manager in Brooklyn, N.Y., knows the appeal of print all too well, with more than 100 books crammed into her “tiny" apartment. “I love to collect all the books I have read as a tangible memento of the stories they represent," she said.
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