In 2023, the National Endowment for the Arts reported that, over the preceding decade, the proportion of adults who read at least one book a year had fallen from fifty-five per cent to forty-eight per cent. That’s a striking change, but modest compared to what’s happened among teen-agers: the National Center for Education Statistics—which has recently been gutted by the Trump Administration—found that, over roughly the same period, the number of thirteen-year-olds who read for fun “almost every day” fell from twenty-seven per cent to fourteen per cent. Predictably, college professors have been complaining with more than usual urgency about phone-addled students who struggle to read anything of substantial length or complexity.
I think it’s unfair to compare life before electronics to after. Of course when all you COULD do was bring a book you would.. But people still read. just not so many are so bored they pick up a book.
Quote Citation: Joshua Rothman, “What’s Happening to Reading? | The New Yorker”, 2025-06-17, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/whats-happening-to-reading