Any reader knows the unique delight of settling down with a good book.
But over the past two decades, there has been a steady decline in Americans who read for fun, according to a recently published study.
Researchers from University College London and the University of Florida examined national data from 2003 to 2023 and found that the share of people who reported reading for pleasure on a given day fell to 16 per cent in 2023 from a peak of 28 per cent in 2004 – a drop of about 40 per cent. It declined around 3 per cent each year over those two decades.
There is evidence that reading for pleasure has been declining since the 1940s, the researchers said, but they called the size of the latest decrease “surprising,” given that the study defined reading broadly, encompassing books, magazines and newspapers in print, electronic or audio form.
Many previous studies’ results could be questioned because they didn’t explicitly account for e-books and audiobooks, said Daisy Fancourt, a co-author of the study and a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London.
The study did not answer the question of why Americans were reading less. But the authors suggested some possible explanations, including increased use of social media and other technology, or more time spent at work because of economic pressure. Further research would be needed to confirm those theories.
The decline in reading could have implications for Americans’ learning, relationships and overall well-being, the researchers said.
“Even though reading is often thought of as more of an individual activity, when we read stories, we actually form connections with characters,” Dr Fancourt said. “The empathy that we feel for them is actually real, and these connections with characters can be ways that we can feel less alone, that we can feel socially and emotionally validated.”
The new study, published in the journal iScience, relied on data from the American Time Use Survey, which asks thousands of Americans per year to describe in detail how they spent a day. Over the 20 years the researchers analysed, more than 236,000 Americans completed the survey.
The findings showed significant demographic disparities among those who read for pleasure. For example, in 2023, the most highly educated people were more than twice as likely to read as the least educated, and high-income people were about 1.5 times as likely to read as low-income people. Those disparities widened over time.
The researchers also found that, while more than 20 per cent of people surveyed had a child under 9 years old, only 2 per cent of those surveyed read with a child – a finding that stayed largely flat throughout the study period but that could contribute to further declines in adult reading going forward, the researchers said.
Research indicates that reading can have a wide range of benefits for educational attainment, reasoning and comprehension skills, imagination, empathy, mental health, cognitive health and more.
Jill Sonke – a co-author of the new paper and a director of the EpiArts Lab at the University of Florida, which studies how engagement in the arts and culture affects health – said she would like to see more awareness that reading is a resource “for our health and well-being.”
“As we’re living in this really complex and really challenging time, we really need to be intentional about the ways in which we support our health,” Dr Sonke said.
Dr Fancourt expressed particular concern about the increase in demographic disparities among those who read for fun. Not only were people reading less, she said, but “potentially the people who could benefit the most for their health – so people from disadvantaged groups – are actually benefiting the least.”
People may draw particular benefits from thinking deeply about what they read and talking about it with others.
It is not the case that “I can sit you down and give you a Jane Austen novel, you read it, and you come out with better mental health,” said James Carney, an associate professor at the London Interdisciplinary School and the lead author of a 2022 study on reading and mental health.
But discussing and reflecting on fiction – as opposed to just reading it – was linked to better mental health and social capabilities, including the ability to perceive nuances in interpersonal relationships, said Dr Carney, who was not involved in the new study. Engaging with many forms of nonfiction would probably have similar benefits, he said.
By Maggie Astor © The New York Times Company
The article originally appeared in The New York Times.
