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Reading for pleasure plummets by 40% in the US
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y agoMakes sense. Since I started reading the classics I'm basically reading for suffering now.
- nicbou 1y agoIn the last 20 years. It's not surprising given all the new forms of entertainment we have.
- cjoelrun 1y agoIt's got a lot of competition.
- dlenski 1y agoJust read this article. It was fun.
- falcor84 1y agoI think that at least to some extent, the stranger-than-fiction reality we're living through is a strong substitute for the novelty we used to seek in books.
- hodgesrm 1y agoI just read "Slow Horses" by Mike Herron. It's easily as good as the show on Apple TV and was lots of fun to read. I can't imagine anything more entertaining.
- moose333 1y agoI found that book to be such a slough (pun very much intended) to get through. Maybe the British humo(u)r just didn't land for me? I had the same problem with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hodgesrm 1y agoShare your issues with Hitchhiker's Guide. It never resonated for me. Fortunately the diversity of books matches the diversity of human tastes.
- oliwary 1y agoI find that when I start reading a book that I enjoy, it is easily the most gripping form of entertainment, and I can barely put the book down. But, it also takes more effort to get started, so I rarely get into that zone and end up scrolling my phone instead.
- asdff 1y agoIt makes sense. Flashing colors and noise and people making dramatic expressions is deeply satisfying to the monkey brain versus boring text and abstracted thinking.
- kylecazar 1y agoIt's true for me too. I read fiction for leisure infrequently, but when I do, I'm in the zone if it's good.
- conception 1y agoThis is generally true of anything worthwhile - it always takes some activation energy. Watching a good film vs mindless one, tiktok vs a book, gardening vs tv. Investment of time into things worthwhile vs that immediate dopamine hit is a constant battle.
- AaronAPU 1y agoI think for me the friction comes from the commitment required to finish the book. If I pick up a book and I’ve not been reading lately, it means I need to commit to picking up that book for weeks. I know you don’t necessarily need to finish every book, but if I don’t finish then I won’t be able to pick it up again later without forgetting the progress or re-reading the same sections again. Neither are desirable.
- kleiba 1y agoMaybe it's because of applying too narrow a definition of what contents should count as "for pleasure reading": books, magazines... but what about blog posts, social media? Certainly, that's something people read for personal pleasure?!
- RyanOD 1y agoI flew from Detroit to Seattle last night. I used that time to read 170 pages of Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad (easy, entertaining read). Though I obviously didn't walk the entire plane, looking around from my seat / when walking to the restroom, everyone I saw was watching a movie.
- brightball 1y agoI enjoy reading for pleasure. On a plane that has a screen, I almost intentionally find something there to watch instead. I don't know why but for some reason I just have very little desire to read on planes when the screen is an option.
- jmcphers 1y agoI read for pleasure every day and watch very few movies, but on an airplane I often wind up watching a movie. I think it's because it helps distract my senses from the grubby discomfort of modern air travel (people packed in tightly, loud jet engines, etc.), and because in my everyday life I'm always obligated to consider others' preferences for a film -- the airplane is one of the only places I can watch something I'd actually choose for myself.
- RyanOD 1y agoYes, being able to choose a movie you (and only you) want to watch is a definite win.
- 7jjjjjjj 1y agoPlanes are the worst way to watch a movie. Even with good noise cancelling headphones you can barely hear the dialogue. The screen is a 10 year old el cheapo LCD, and the video is 480p compressed to hell. On top of that, it has unskippable ads and the film is muted whenever the PA is on.
- crooked-v 1y agoIt looks like they didn't include podcasts. Given the rise of various podcasts that are basically serialized audiobooks, I have to wonder what the numbers would be like including them.
- renjimen 1y agoOne of their primary motivations was understanding changes in literacy, so it makes sense they wouldn't include audiobooks (or podcasts).
- leethomas 1y ago> The paper also noted that although reading with children is rare, it has not changed much over time. This part really got to me, reading to one's children is rare? That's so sad. My toddler loves reading with me.
- giantg2 1y agoHow many people have yoyung children? It could just be a distribution/sampling problem.
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y agoI read to my youngest until he was 14. He grew up with me reading to him at bedtime and just enjoyed it. We started with Detective Dinosaur and ended with either One Hundred Years of Solitude or Ender's Game. Don't remember which.
- slipperydippery 1y agoWith the really young kids you could lead with One Hundred Years of Solitude. There are lots of times you're not really showing them pictures in the book—or they're too young even for that, really, can't focus their eyes well—and they just need to hear the sounds and flow of language, not to understand every word (or any words). I read mine To the Lighthouse and shit like that, it was great, I think each kid got three or four "classics" while very young. I could pare down my own to-read list while being "a good parent", LOL, felt like a cheat code.
- c22 1y agoWhen my oldest was less than two I used to read her research papers and random technical PDFs that I was interested in reading anyway. She enjoyed them as much as any story.
- armoredkitten 1y agoFrom the full paper: "Although reading with children did not change over time, rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day. Overall, 21% of our sample had a child under 9 years (the age by which most can read independently) with them during the diary day. So a large majority of those with young children did not read with them." So of people with young children, it looks like the rate is about 9.5%.
- makeitdouble 1y ago> reading for pleasure (reading a book, newspaper, magazine, reading on electronic devices and listening to audiobooks) Given the social media engagement numbers, for better or worse that would be enough to put us at peak reading. Is it fun ? nobody's setting on gun on people's head so it would still fit the article's définition IMHO. This reminds me of articles lamenting people's attention span because they don't watch the endless spinoffs of Lord of the Ring, and play Zelda instead.
- 0xcafefood 1y agoSocial media seems to be moving to images and now even (ultra) short-form video content. Does a hypothetic 40% increase in social media engagement offset a 40% decline in reading in any meaningful way?
- makeitdouble 1y agoThere is the fundamental question of how much that number matters (if someone spends more time fly fishing than reading fanfics, should it be "fixed" ?). But even setting that aside, while YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are the mainstream, Threads and Bluesky came up as new platforms and are text first. They could have let the Twitter paradigm die but chose to heavily invest in that market instead, and it seems to be working, so at least the idea still has legs ? Interestingly, with current LLM limitations I'd assume text in - text out usage will keep being the focus for a while as well.
- Hikikomori 1y agoUS about to need a lot of low skilled workers so its okay I guess?
- j45 1y agoWhile mindless scrolling may have replaced some of that, intentional reading is way more rewarding. It's pretty astounding what reading to kids every day can do for them regardless of the environment they grow up in.
- renjimen 1y agoThere's a large difference between reading a book and reading social media posts or news articles: books require hours of concentration to consume, have long-spanning arcs of plot or other structure, and require significant use of our imagination (particularly fiction). You just don't get those three things from any other form of written media.
- sotajensede 1y agoSigned in just to a agree with this. Over the years, I have seen many people bring up some trite form of online reading in an attempt to raise it to the level of what we typically think of when referring to book reading. It's a stance I really can't take seriously, both as a concept and due to personal experience. "The C Programming Language" did not give me vivid dreams or boost my writing skills, general creativity, and vocabulary when I first read it. A mid-level sci-fi book from the 80s, when I haven't done any for-fun reading in a while, does. There is clearly a cognitive difference between the very act of consuming each of these. In comparison, social media posts or news articles are far closer on the broad spectrum of reading to the the like of road signs and subscriber agreements. The mechanical act of reading is simply not equivalent over the broad range of content that can be read, and so its effects on the mind are also not equivalent. Related? Sure, but only by the fundamental understanding of symbols and language. Apologies for the rant.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 1y agoWas absolutely horrified when books read per year came up in a discussion and I realized answer was maybe one. That was in a discussion with my parents no less...who raised me in a household that had an unspoken "we'll pay for it if you finish the book" rule so book culture was definitely there. Worst part is my book acquisition strategy has been on point. I have good books. Amazon daily sales are 95% crap...5% daily not crap monitored daily over years = library of respectable books. idk...as I said horrified is the word that comes to mind. I genuinely don't get how this snuck up on me like that
- Swizec 1y agoQuestion: How much is this impacted by people who read for pleasure but fool themselves into thinking it's useful? Many books are closer to edutainment than practical applicable advice. To a certain type of person these are easier to read (spend time on) than reading purely fiction. And even then it's easy to say you only read fiction that is totally giving you something more insightful than entertainment. See also many YouTube/Instagram/TiKTok channels and most if not all Substack (et al) newsletters. Yes of course deep diving into <niche subject> at 2am is super critical to my life!
- ok123456 1y agoNot many people read physics textbooks for fun. If you peruse "booktok," the books these people are bragging about reading are barely a step up from the supermarket romance novels that people used to make fun of. (Remember Fabio?) Making a big deal about reading for the sake of reading is a sign and signifier of having virtuous consumption patterns.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoI prefer to read hybrid when possible, e.g. Reverend Insanity
- lovich 1y agoI’ve found my own reading for pleasure has dropped a lot the past year as well and it’s almost entirely due to AI. Most(easily 90%) of my reading came in the form of serialized novels that are published chapter by chapter in various forums. They’ve all been swamped with AI content that’s good enough to not be immediately obvious but then becomes a waste of time after a few paragraphs. And it’s just a firehose of this kind of content. I can’t tell if the actual human made content is down because people are tired of the competition or if there really is that much bot activity that the human activity is being watered down to single digit percentages
- zem 1y agoit sounds like there's a need for a blog or forum where people discuss and recommend these series, so the actual human ones can stand out.
- ryoshoe 1y agoIt's genuinely sad how the golden-age of web-serials seems to now be behind us. One of my favorite things is how the format allows the community to stay engaged with the story in a way that doesn't really happen when an author releases a completed novel
- winrid 1y agoPeople are overworked, and the time they do have is taken by phones.
- sorrythanks 1y agothat's interesting because Barnes & Noble and Waterstones are opening more stores because buying books is up
- philwelch 1y agoJust like gym memberships and Steam games, many people buy more books than they actually read.
- shusaku 1y agoMaybe I am misunderstanding the study but I don’t understand why reading a magazine or newspaper is counted while reading an article on one’s phone is not.
- daedrdev 1y agoI think more interesting is reading a book on a phone doesn't seem to count, which his the main way I read. Further, reading on tablets, computers, or smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether this behavior would have been classified as reading for personal interest or technology use.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 1y agoYou in fact are misunderstanding the article, reading on an electronic device is included reading for pleasure - it is one of the three categories listed parenthetically as that. Quote: The study focused on two activities: reading for pleasure (reading a book, newspaper, magazine, reading on electronic devices and listening to audiobooks) and reading with children.
- shusaku 1y agoFrom the linked actual journal article I thought this part should be limited to e-readers > ATUS asked participants to recall all their activities over 24 h, beginning at 4 a.m. on the day prior to the interview and ending at 4 a.m. on the day of the interview (Figure 1). Activities were coded using a standard lexicon, verified by two coders. We focused on two reading outcomes: (1) daily reading for pleasure, classified by ATUS as reading for personal interest (e.g., reading a magazine/book/newspaper, listening to audiobooks, reading on a Kindle or other e-reader; Table S1); and (2) daily reading with children (e.g., reading to or with household or non-household children, listening to child read, helping child read; Table S1).
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- lisbbb 1y agoI went in a Barnes & Noble recently and was underwhelmed by the sheer amount of vapid crap masquerading as literature these days. I'm pretty sure if people are avoiding most of that crap that it's a good thing not a bad thing.
- drak0n1c 1y agoPublishers, and their choices of what authors and stories to promote and which to ignore are just as to blame as readers for narrowing and filtering the book reading public.
- Gigachad 1y agoAnything post 2023 has a high chance of being complete generated slop now too.
- gnerd00 1y agoback in the day, bookstores specialized.. Barnes & Noble were a warehouse-sized super-commercial shop from the start; pushing vapid crap was certainly in that mix. Unfortunately, Amazon Books out-inventoried even the behemoth Barnes & Noble.. think Walmart for books. It was intentional.
- daedrdev 1y agoFurther, reading on tablets, computers, or smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether this behavior would have been classified as reading for personal interest or technology use. I would like to cast doubt on the findings if they don't include phones.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoIt shouldn't count. That is distracted reading, imo.
- celsoazevedo 1y agoPhones and tables come with a "do not disturb" mode, notification control, etc. It's only "distracted reading" if we want it to be like that.
- daedrdev 1y agohow is it different if I spend an hour reading on a phone or a e-reader? I silence my messages either way.
- lttlrck 1y agoSo is reading a paperback in a house full of kids or Starbucks.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoMaking my point for me. A phone, in a solitary environment, is the equivalent of adding a house full of kids or people who bother you
- greygoo222 1y agoDo you think reading in Starbucks doesn't count as reading?
- sosuke 1y ago
- RickJWagner 1y agoNot in my household. I recently retired, one of my pastimes is reading. My wife has been a voracious reader already, so we’re getting some good quality reading time. The best discovery: instead of going to Goodwill to find good books, I’ve been using our local library’s online services. ( Libby and Hoopla. ) These provide an endless supply of reading material, all stored neatly on my iPad and with adjustable fonts and background. This is a golden age of leisure reading!