Are children reading less for pleasure than they used to? It feels like one of those “death of the novel” questions, the kind it's almost compulsory to ask at regular intervals if you are even semiserious about books. But in this instance, as I am fairly sure has been the case several times in the past when I've reported on the same annual report, the occasion for the question is a new survey of reading habits.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The survey, run by HarperCollins, NielsenIQ, and the Reading Agency, is UK based, but the issues it raises have much wider reach.
Declining Numbers
The headline focuses on the decline in reading for pleasure among five- to seventeen-year-olds, which sank from 39 percent in 2012 to 25 percent in 2025. And the researchers involved suggested that among the youngest in that group the problem could lie with an increased focus on literacy as an end in itself rather than letting children discover and play.
The debate on how to get children to read is far beyond the remit here, but I do want to highlight some really positive green shoots here among eleven- to seventeen-year-olds. Significant changes occurred between 2024 and 2025, such as a fall in those who think “books aren't cool”: from 45 percent to 38 percent. And a fall from 36 percent to 30 percent in fourteen- to seventeen-year-old boys who never read. Indeed, the proportion of eleven- to seventeen-year-old boys and girls reading for pleasure rose.
The BookTok Factor
Can you guess what the Guardian's reporters put right next to those green shoots, as if by way of the implication we are so used to seeing in almost any positive seeming context? If you guessed BookTok you are, of course, right. Specifically, more children are discovering books through BookTok. Which is great. And I am sure social media is a factor in books not being seen as uncool so much. But I'm sure it's more complicated.
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