I can’t vouch for the methodology behind the survey that generated this chart, but it pretty much reflects the numbers I’ve been seeing over the last few years from numerous other sources. The takeaway headline is easy to spot: The top 4% of readers by themselves read almost half the books read in this country in any given year. But the saddest takeaway, by far, is that 40% of U.S. adults don’t read a single book per year. Not. Even. One.
I suppose that’s at least partially attributable to the fact that we have so many choices today when it comes to learning new things or just entertaining ourselves. The internet is a treasure trove of learning possibilities that offers free college lectures, documentaries, movies and television shows, online degrees, instructional videos covering everything imaginable (YouTube is indispensable when it comes to these), etc. But come on.
According to the arts.gov site (National Endowment for the Arts), the reading slide started back in the early 1990s, and has never really stopped. There is, in fact, some indication that the downward trend may have started as early as 1982 with small, unremarkable yearly drops over ten years that really became more noticeable in 1992 when the yearly percentage drops accelerated to a degree that they could no longer be ignored. Another startling NEA statistic claims that “daily leisure reading” had dropped from its 2004 peak of 28% down to 16% by 2023. That is a drop of over 40% in less than 20 years, and I don’t think it’s an accident that it happened during the Netflix age.
The scariest thing about this trend, though, is that it is proving true across all age groups, even children.
So what if the problem is that it is just too much work to read for pleasure if you find it difficult even to read at all. Average reading scores in schools have been slipping for a while, and it looks like that trend, too, is going to be a long one. It is said that the average reading level among all adults in this country today is at roughly a 6th grade level. I don’t know about you, but that scares the heck out of me - and it explains a whole lot about what’s wrong with the world today.
It says a lot about the world we live in...and it's both scary and sad! I know kids at the school where I work would rather be on a screen than look at a book. Though there are exceptions. And those few kids who still love books and reading give me hope. Shows me there are some parents who still read to their kids. I just wish there were more of them!
ReplyDeleteI may be a bit misguided, but it always bothers me to see toddlers carrying around little iPads or tablets in public settings. They seem more addicted to them than their parents are, and I doubt that many of those kids are ever going to enjoy a book the way they “enjoy” their tablets or phones. Sad to me.
DeleteThose are very interesting statistics about reading, and sad and scary too. I am just grateful that my son, in his early forties, still reads a lot and loves to read. He has several books going at a time. I have read stats about reading comprehension going down in schools and it bothers me.
ReplyDeleteYour son sounds like an old school book lover. I’ve noticed the same about my recently married granddaughter. When I see her we always manage to talk books for at least a few minutes, just the two of us, and that’s a personal bond that I treasure.
DeleteIt is scary ... and seems to say a lot about the ills of our society today. I find that in the 1990s with the internet and the propulsion of screens reading must have taken hit ... so I blame that. Even I have to push myself to scroll less ... so my mind isn't too busy for reading. I didn't realize 40% havent read even one book. Very startling. On the whole people seem more ignorant today than yesteryear ... or perhaps that's just a perception ...
ReplyDeleteI find the same. If I go to the internet just to catch up on the daily news headlines, I sometimes don’t climb back out of that black hole to the light of day for over an hour. And I get nothing much from the time spent that way other than some semblance of cheap entertainment. It’ way too easy to get addicted to the algorithms that know us better than we know ourselves.
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