Reading for fun is going extinct. Not reading for work, or for school, or because a self-help podcast told you to—but reading for no reason other than you felt like it. That kind is in freefall.
According to a massive study just published in iScience, the number of Americans who read for pleasure every day has nosedived from 28 percent in 2004 to just 16 percent in 2023. Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of London crunched data from over 236,000 adults across two decades, and watched reading as a pastime slowly evaporate.
“This is not just a small dip,” said Jill Sonke, one of the study’s authors, in a press release. “It’s significant, and it’s deeply concerning.” And not just because books are generally just…good. Studies link recreational reading to improved mental health, empathy, comprehension, and even public health outcomes. It’s one of the lowest-effort, highest-reward habits out there. And yet.
Reading for Pleasure Is Dying, and Experts Are Sounding the Alarm
What’s killing it isn’t just TikTok or Netflix or the temptation to refresh your email 900 times a day. It’s also systemic. The steepest declines showed up in Black Americans, particularly those with less access to education, stable income, or nearby libraries. “If you’re working multiple jobs or dealing with transportation barriers in a rural area, a trip to the library may just not be feasible,” Sonke.
And while parents reading with kids has long been a gold-standard public health intervention, the number of people actually doing it hasn’t budged in 20 years. It hovers around 2 percent.
The solution, researchers say, isn’t some grand PR campaign for literature. It’s small, local, and slow. Book clubs. Storytime. More books in more hands, without the pressure to track them on Goodreads.
There is a little silver lining. The people who are still reading for fun are doing it longer than before. But the population is shrinking. “Reading has historically been a low-barrier, high-impact way to engage creatively and improve quality of life,” Sonke said. “When we lose one of the simplest tools in our public health toolkit, it’s a serious loss.”
Especially when we’re replacing it with content that disappears after 24 hours.
The post Americans Aren’t Reading Anymore, and Experts Are Worried appeared first on VICE.
