A re-trend?

For the last several months and maybe for the last year even, I have noticed a growing trend in Arlington.  It involves people walking down the street while reading books. These people do not walk very fast, typically, but they also never look up from their books, even when passing another person on the sidewalk.  They appear to be totally engrossed.

I am used to seeing people read to the exclusion of everything around them on the subway, but not on the sidewalk.  So I have been wondering what has prompted the rise in sidewalk readers. 

From my observations, the readers are typically young and typically male, although I have spotted a handful of female sidewalk readers. This fact - that they are generally young - leads me to believe that this is not a trend that has much to do with books in and of themselves, but rather something more to do with the fact that we have programmed the next generation to always be engaged in something even while doing basic tasks.  Something along the lines of ... if they can't have their device doing something, then they will enjoy something as 1990 as a book (1990 being the last time you could safely say books were "in").

With a little research, I've found that there is help for the novice sidewalk reader.  Wikihow has instructions on how to read while walking. People have chimed in on Yelp about it, and there is even a Reading While Walking page on Facebook.

Clearly, I'm fascinated with this trend and have questions.  Are the readers really absorbing what they read or is it more of a post-modernist statement?  Do they mean to shut the world out while they walk and if so, why not just wear ear buds and an iPod?  Speaking of iPods, why not just get the book on "tape" via an MP3 player?  And more curious, given the ages of the readers, do they not have iPads? I thought everyone younger than me has an iPad.

One thing I can be certain of, I will not be joining this trend.  For no other reason than I would likely be a statistic and the first person killed reading while walking.  Now reading on the subway, that's a whole other story.