What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
I recently stumbled across some startling numbers. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), fewer than 10% of U.S. 13-year-olds read for pleasure “almost every day.” Let that sink in. Back in 2012, it was 27%. By 2020, it had fallen to 16%. In 2023, the percentage slid to 14%. And now? We’re under 10%.
Even among adults, the love affair with books seems to be fading. A 2023 study found that only 16% of American grown-ups read for pleasure daily. This is a staggering 40% drop over the last two decades.
How sad is this?
Growing up, I read at least two books a week. My mom would swing by the library while I was at school, carefully choosing novels, mysteries, and biographies she thought I’d devour. She was my personal book curator before algorithms started recommending what to “like.” Reading wasn’t just something I did. It was oxygen. It was an escape hatch from the messiness of adolescence.
As a tween, I even received a typewriter to write my own novel. (Yes, a typewriter. A clunky, wonderful thing that made each word feel weighty, permanent. And oh, the drama of pulling the paper out with a flourish!) I didn’t just love reading stories. I loved writing them, living inside them.
But now, it seems, stories are vanishing. Or at least, the way we hold and cherish them is. Do people not like stories anymore?
Paula Cole once asked in song: “Where have all the cowboys gone?” I find myself asking: Where have all the readers and writers gone?
Everybody just wants bullets now. Not the cowboy kind. The bullet point kind. Quick hits. Fast takes. Swipe left. Swipe right. Content as fast food. TikTok is, I suppose, a form of oral storytelling. A modern-day campfire where the flames are neon ring lights. But the full-bodied narrative: a beginning, a middle, an end; that’s slipping through our collective fingers.
We are a society hungry for dopamine, not development. We crave the “next thing” more than the whole thing. But the loss is enormous. Without stories, we lose mirrors and windows. We lose empathy. We lose the connective tissue of humanity.
So maybe the question isn’t just “where have the readers gone?” Maybe the bigger one is: What happens to us if they don’t come back?
Because a society that forgets how to read for joy risks forgetting how to imagine. And without imagination, we’re just scrolling.
Categories: childhood, Culture, current events, identity, Pop Culture, Psychology, society, writing
psychologistmimi 
My 20-year-old assistant just finished reading my first 167K mainstream novel – and was all enthusiastic about it.
I hadn’t thought she would read it – not a requirement of the job, obviously, when it takes about 11 hours to read Pride’s Children: PURGATORY.
And she LIKED it! And she just realized that the second book in the trilogy, NETHERWORLD, picks up the same story only a few days later – and takes TWELVE hours to read.
The young aren’t being given the guidance you and I got – the world is too busy, they scroll through fast-food on their phones. We barely had TV, and that only happened at certain times the networks chose, not by streaming whenever we wanted.
I don’t know what we need to do, but there is something so special about reading, and constructing that movie in your head no one but you sees, that we have to infect them with somehow, because it is magical AND very good for the brain.
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I believe people are still reading, it’s probably less straightforward to assess that now. When people mostly got books from libraries or new purchases, it was easier to know who and who is reading..now more people read ebooks and not everyone buys it and their sources are so vast(mainly being pirated) so probably more difficult to track. Also there’s this like video story narration thing, usually see them as ads on YouTube or other sites, apparently young people love getting their stories that way, I know of one who watches/listens to that many times a day.
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You make very valid points! I do admit that if I were to be in my old ways of reading, I would love to read a hardback book. Love the feel of that.
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We now have more people who write then people who read, and those who still read are the writers who comment on other writers.
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I completely believe that!
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Holy moly, where do you find the time?
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I had some problems commenting so I don’t know if this comment will post and if there will be a double post, but I was just saying that I also read a lot when I was young, mostly science fiction books as well as factual books that I chose myself. I still read a lot. However, today there is so much entertainment, TV series etc., as well as social media. Unfortunately, other than talking to friends, social media is filled with toxic crap and certainly not good reading.
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