Reading rates in the United States have declined steadily over the past two decades. The National Endowment for the Arts reported that less than half of American adults had read a work of literature in 2003 — a drop of seven percentage points from 1992. The American Time Use Survey found that the average American spent approximately nineteen minutes per day reading in 2004. By 2022, that figure had fallen to ten minutes. The share of Americans who haven’t read any books in a given year rose from roughly 8% in the late 1970s to approximately 23% in 2021. Declines have been most pronounced among young adults and men, but every demographic is reading less than before.

Scholars have proposed several explanations. Obviously, the growth of digital media and smartphone use is frequently cited. Screen time has increased as reading rates have fallen. Studies on attention suggest that this screen time may reduce our tolerance for the sustained focus that reading requires. Economic factors also play a role: Americans are working more hours than a generation ago. Our leisure time is limited, and many of us may find it easier to be stimulated by videos on our screens than to read. Some researchers point to educational shifts. Standardized testing requirements reduced time available for independent reading in K–12 schools beginning in the early 2000s, and most students aren’t assigned whole books to read in their curriculum. Some argue that digital reading — long-form journalism, online books, newsletters like this one, I’d imagine — goes undercounted in surveys that focus primarily on physical books and audiobooks. But regardless, this consumption is unlikely to outweigh the measured decline.

The sociopolitical consequences are fascinating. Our deep literacy skills grow with long-form reading (when we read more than 1,000 words in a session). This practice gives us the tools to follow extended arguments, evaluate evidence, and understand perspectives other than our own. These skills are considered foundational to informed democratic participation: readers are more likely to vote and identify misinformation on the web. Cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf emphasizes that the decline of deep reading represents not merely a cultural shift, but a threat to the cognitive infrastructure on which democratic societies depend. A population that consumes information primarily through short-form and algorithmically curated content is more susceptible to oversimplification, which can lead to the collapse of shared factual frameworks.

What we choose to read — and whether we choose to read at all — is inseparable from who we choose to become. Reading builds the capacity for empathy by requiring us to inhabit lives unlike our own. It builds the capacity for discernment by requiring us to sit with complexity long enough to understand it. It builds the capacity for imagination by giving us language for worlds that do not yet exist. Without it, who will we allow to read for us? Whose imaginations will we allow to shift our reality? Reading is a way of being, one that asks us to slow down, to attend, to think. As we grow, we’ve got to explore how we can protect the conditions in which reading remains possible and reclaim that spark for ourselves and our communities.

Organizations worth supporting that are guiding more readers to resources

Reading has always been a form of resistance, even when it’s recreational. Here are four events that shaped the world of reading as we know it today.

The criminalization of literacy under slavery (1740–1865)

In 1740, South Carolina enacted the Negro Act, which prohibited teaching enslaved people to read or write. The legislation was passed in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion, a slave uprising that killed more than twenty white colonists. Most Southern states enacted similar statutes over the following century, with penalties applied to both enslaved people and the white individuals who taught them. Virginia's 1831 law, passed in the wake of Nat Turner's rebellion, imposed fines and corporal punishment for violations. Proponents of the laws argued that literacy facilitated communication among enslaved people and increased the likelihood of organized resistance. The laws remained in effect until the abolition of slavery following the Civil War.

The establishment of public libraries (1848–early 1900s)

The Boston Public Library, established by an act of the Massachusetts legislature in 1848, was the first publicly funded municipal library in the United States. Its founding was premised on the idea that tax-supported institutions should make books and educational materials available to all residents regardless of economic status. Between 1883 and 1929, Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of 2,509 libraries across the English-speaking world, including 1,689 in the United States. Access to these institutions was not uniform. In the South, Carnegie libraries were frequently segregated or entirely closed to non-white patrons, prompting the establishment of separate