Via PaidContent.org:

Children may love eBooks and think they're "fun and cool," but the notoriously hard-to-please 13-17 demographic still thinks they're, like, totally square. Despite the fact that adults are mostly convinced that readers and tablets are the way of the future, teens are still clinging to the past, with, according to a recent study presented at a conference on children's books, 66% admitting that they prefer things printed on actual pages. Kids today! Always doing the exact opposite of what you, as an adult, think they should be doing.

The statistics, which come from two consumer studies, illustrate the fact that, despite the publishing industry's worries, printed books are still relevant--even to teenagers, who are usually some of the earliest adopters of new technologies. But apparently, it's the lack of some very specific technological advancements that is keeping teens back. From the article:

One reason for this resistance: Teens like using social technology to discuss and share things with their friends, and e-books at this point are not a social technology. An increasing number of teens surveyed says there are too many restrictions on using e-books: 14 percent said so in 2011, compared to 6 percent in 2010.

Surely, that can't be the only reason, because paper books also can't Tweet. But there's another--and it's something that, like large-framed glasses and a reverence for napping in the afternoon, teens share with geriatrics:

Teens (like other age groups) say the major barrier against reading on mobile devices is the size of the screen.

But does size really matter that much? My copy of The Perks Of Being A Wallflower was so small I could fit it in my second-hand jacket when I was an angsty high schooler. Are today's teens already a little too old to be enamored by technologies that seem less cool like, say, a tablet computer? Or maybe it's because they're being raised in a bizarrely nostalgic era, where cool kids can have their own green beans and typewriters are awesome again.

Image: Adding a little shoe spice to the stacks ... by Enokson, on Flickr