00:00Time now for our Entre Nous segment and today is March 11th and it's National Reading Day
00:05here in France, with schools across the country pushing children to read for at least 15 minutes
00:10every single day.
00:11However, certain trends have started to cause some concern.
00:15To talk more about this, we'll be speaking to Elisabeth Milov-Vidov, founder of Digital
00:20Parenting Coach, as well as Solange Mougin.
00:22Solange, let me start with you first.
00:24Is France really a nation of readers?
00:27Yeah, France indeed has one of the highest levels of readers in Europe, with three out
00:31of four French people or some 40 million people over the age of 15 having read at least one
00:36book in 2024.
00:38This is according to the National Union of Publishers.
00:41However, there is some concern that young people in particular are reading less and
00:45there's also concern about what some of them are reading, certain literary trends such
00:50as dark romance going viral, particularly among young girls.
00:55We will get to that in a minute, but first, when it comes to reading, where are children
01:00at?
01:01Well, the National Center of Books created this day with the L'Education Nationale,
01:04the Education Department, to promote the habit of reading for at least 15 minutes a day,
01:09for they found that young French kids spend 10 times more time per day on screens than
01:14on reading for fun.
01:16On average, kids spend 3 hours and 11 minutes on screens versus 19 minutes spent reading
01:23for pleasure.
01:24Now, the questionnaire excluded school time reading and also took into account for reading
01:29and listening to a book on a tablet that's counted as reading.
01:33So French children are generally reading less than they are watching.
01:37But among those that are reading, what are they reading and should adults be concerned
01:41about what they're reading?
01:42Well, graphic novels and bons dessinés or mangas, Japanese graphic novels, they are
01:47huge here in France and that warrants an entire segment in itself.
01:50But today I wanted to concentrate on the rising trend among teens, particularly teen
01:55girls, that is creating some concern among educators and parents, and that is dark romance.
02:00Now, Solange, this trend of dark romance emerged in part due to how young teens are getting
02:07into reading.
02:08Yeah, to break this down, I need to explain the phenomenon of book talk and new romance,
02:14and then we can get to one of its offshoots, dark romance.
02:17So if you do not know what book talk is, T-O-K, not T-A-L-K, book talk, it is a community
02:23and a hashtag on TikTok where you have young book reviewers critiquing and praising books
02:28with sort of short, snappy videos.
02:30Altogether, there are around 60 billion videos that have collectively around 200 billion
02:35views.
02:36So this is quite huge.
02:38And it has created a space where otherwise unknown authors can suddenly go viral and
02:43sell hundreds of thousands of copies, even millions, if you take, for example, Colleen
02:47Hoover or Rebecca Yaros.
02:49But publishers have, and in addition to this, publishers have caught on with many now hiring
02:54young TikTokers to review books.
02:56It's revolutionizing the industry.
02:59And one genre where book talk really has made major headway is romance.
03:03Now, romance has always had a lucrative and widespread following, but there's been a big
03:08change in the genre from the older generation, say Harlequin or Mills and Boone's novels
03:13with bare-chested swashbucklers saving damsels in distress.
03:17Now these are love stories where the women are often not submissive.
03:21They have agency.
03:22These new romances also are a genre where there are often explicit sex scenes.
03:28There's a ton of sub-genres to romance.
03:31But there is one major rule to all of them, which is that there has to be a happily ever
03:35after ending or an H-E-A in the fan lingo.
03:39And most new romance fans, well, they are young women that read a lot of these books.
03:45In France, the numbers actually doubled in 2023, with six million romance novels sold.
03:50It is so lucrative that many editors say that it's helping save the industry.
03:55The site Babelio, they pulled 7,000 readers and 95% of the romance readers were women.
04:02Over half read more than two romances per month.
04:06And of those readers, 40% of them, this is important, are from 15 to 24-year-olds, with
04:11most of them having started to read romance as young teens.
04:15And that's where we can potentially run into issues with dark romance.
04:19So what exactly is this dark romance?
04:22Well, it is one of the many sub-genres of romance novels.
04:27There are lots of them, from paranormal to historical to gothic to sports romances.
04:32With dark romance, there is, in addition to the happily ever after, there are portrayals
04:37or romanticizations of abuse, be it psychological or physical torture, rape, kidnapping, manipulation,
04:44domination.
04:45In a nutshell, a rough outline of many of these books is abusive bad boy, main character
04:52does essentially toxic and potentially illegal in real life things to an often meek and submissive
04:58girl.
04:59Like Fifty Shades of Grey, which was seen as a precursor to the genre, or the million-plus
05:04bestseller by Colleen Hoover, It Ends With Us.
05:07There's debate about whether or not that is dark romance or not.
05:10Now, you could argue all of this is fine.
05:13It is fiction.
05:14And readers are able to distinguish between escapist fiction and real life.
05:18For example, crime novel fans, they don't suddenly become serial killers.
05:23That's one argument.
05:24But if you take into account the number of young people that are reading these books
05:28thanks to science-like book talk, again, 70% of book talk and TikTok users, rather,
05:34are under 24.
05:35It raises the question of very young readers and their access to these books.
05:40It also raises the question, like pornography does, of what does this viral subgenre do
05:46to the minds of young people that may not necessarily have the tools yet to read them
05:50critically?
05:51And then how does this affect their views on relationships of society?
05:56Should such glorifications of toxic relationships and abuse be kept from young eyes?
06:02Should there be a warning system or laws like there is, for example, with child pornography
06:05or racism?
06:08Does this, though, infringe on free speech?
06:10That's a counterargument.
06:11These are not easy questions.
06:13But there is a need, at least for parents, to be aware that there is a trend among some
06:18young girls who are reading potentially some very dark stuff.
06:23It seems like it.
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