Is being illiterate cool now a days?

While I was working the dishwasher (girl who does dishes) and I were having a conversation. Knowing all too well that she and my cousin have been dating for a year she's been admitted to the cousin-in-law circle. We had a few meaningless conversation, small talk if you will, but eventually I brought up the subject of reading. Just at the word reading she responded "I hate reading, there's no point, you never learn anything.", this was an honest shock. Do young people now a days think there are no benefits to reading a book, the news paper or even an article online?

I know we hear this enough, people always putting the fault of illiteracy or of just plain ignorance to spelling towards the internet. I agree that the internet might have some and I do say SOME blame, but it's not at fault. All those acronyms and short forms of "chatting" for example lol (Laugh Out Loud), ok, kay, k or kk (Okay), OMG (Oh My God), ASAP (As Soon As Possible), BRB (Be Right Back), LMAO (Laugh My Ass Off), Rents (Parents) etc etc. I for one have no problem with the acronyms or the short forms that the youth uses today, my problem's only in the fact that some of them don't know how to spell out those words. One fact that shocks me more in more is the fact that most of our youth thinks that okay or O.K. is really spelled ok it's accepted,  I guess it's not really a big difference than O.K. and ok.

I love reading, and the only reason I can think of why I like reading is because of my mother and my father. Reading's never been a strong point to my childhood friends, they were never big on reading. My father was the one who read to me every night and when I got a little older, I'd read to him. My mother was the one who read around me, she'd have the television on but have her nose in a book, if she wasn't baking or knitting. Thanks to my father I learnt to read and thanks to my mother I continued reading through the basic instinct of "Monkey see monkey do".

But another thing that the "dishwasher" said "There are better things to do with your time, like drinking." I for one approve for the social gathering and "sloshing" if you will, but all moderated not ALL THE TIME! If you're one of those people who find reading useless ... then ask yourself what you've been doing these past few minutes on my blog. You'll be surprised by the answer.