As writers, many (not all, as for the purposes of this item reading for pleasure is differentiated from reading for work or study) of us rely for our living on the fact that people love reading for pleasure—which is something probably almost all of us do and cannot imagine not doing.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
And that means any changing trends in the general population’s reading habits are of existential importance for us. A new paper gives a deep dive into this, based on a large sample (236,000 participants in the American Time Use Survey) over the period 2003–2023. You can also read coverage of the study in The Guardian.
Reading Declines but Family Reading Holds Steady
The headline figure is that reading for pleasure decreased significantly—by 40 percent—in that time period, falling from something 28 percent of people do to 16 percent, continuing a downward trend that past cohorts in the same survey have suggested has been ongoing for 80 years. Which is extremely worrying for us. But when I went to look at the paper itself, there were some other interesting nuggets.
First, the authors found no evidence that reading with children was in decline (though the numbers engaged in this were in the low single digits percentage-wise). I found it interesting that almost everyone who read for pleasure did so at home, but the researchers draw explicit attention to the fact that the survey doesn’t highlight electronic reading.
Technology’s Attempted Response
This is at least part of what many technological developments seek to address (or at least state they do in their sales pitch), causing entrenched and emotional splits between those who see them as potential solutions or problem accelerants. This month has seen the introduction of one such tool in the form of the Gemini Storybooks app. Which is exactly what it sounds like: an app within the Google Gemini ecosystem that creates AI-generated stories for parents to read to or with children, including artwork.
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