Another study that takes a stab at trying to determine how much, or how little, Americans read has been released. The new report looked how reading for pleasure and reading with children fared between 2003 to 2023 and found that only 16% of adults read for pleasure on a given day in 2023, the lowest rate of any year in the survey and down roughly 40% from 2003. The study also found that reading for pleasure fell about 3% annually between 2003 and 2023.
The results were based on responses from 236,270 individuals who completed the Americans Time Use Survey (ATUS) once between 2003 and 2023, excluding the Covid year of 2020. As is often the case in these studies, the authors did find some good news. The 1,747 participants who did read for pleasure in 2023 spent an average of 1 hour and 37 minutes reading per day, up from 1 hour and 23 minutes in 2003.
When adults are reading, they aren’t reading to their children that much, according to the findings. In 2023, participants spent an average of one minute per day reading with children, and only 2% read with children on a given day. But, the report noted, those small percentages did not change significantly between 2003 and 2023.
The authors, three researchers from the University of London and one from the University of Florida, wrote that they were surprised by the drop in reading given that the ATUS definition of reading for personal interest included not only books, magazines, or newspapers, but also listening to audiobooks and reading e-books. That range of reading choices is larger than some other studies, including the most recent one conducted by the NEA that found that only 48% of adults read one or more book for pleasure in 2022. The authors suggested that given the wider reading choices, the study reflects a general decline in reading, not just in reading books.
Other findings were more in line with other studies, particularly when it comes to the demographic makeup of readers. “Those who identified as female, of White race, were older, who had higher education, greater annual family income, lived in metropolitan areas, and did not have a disability were more likely to read in 2023,” the authors wrote.
The new report also supported the conclusion reached by the NEA that an increase in book sales during Covid was not due to more people reading, but to people who read buying more books. “We expected to find increases in reading from 2019 to 2021 due to the rise in print book sales during the pandemic,” the report said. “Yet, we did not see an increase in the proportion of participants engaged in reading. There may have been a slowing of the decline in reading, and a slight increase in the amount of time spent reading by those who read, but these differences were very small.”
The authors did not cite a specific cause for the decline in reading, although suggested that competition from digital platforms was one likely reason. They noted that reading on tablets, computers, or smartphones was not explicitly included in examples provided to respondents, making it unclear whether such things as reading blogs would have been classified as reading for personal interest or technology use. "Future surveys should aim to capture these types of reading, differentiating them from mindless scrolling," the authors wrote.
