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I think there is a lot going on that contributes to this. 1. Adults read less, so children see their parents reading less often (it at all!) so do not grow up

I think there is a lot going on that contributes to this. 1. Adults read less, so children see their parents reading less often (it at all!) so do not grow up thinking it is a fun thing to do. I love reading because my parents did, and my kids do because I do. 2. Schools do not make reading enjoyable. A teacher I know suggested that their school did somethings to make reading fun, and the management refused because it improve any of their metrics. A friend of by daughter's went to a school where there were times when they had to sit and read a book - nothing kills enjoyment better than being forced to do something. You are telling kids its a chore you have to do, not something done for fun. There are other things do. There are schools that teach Shakespeare for English literature GCSE without giving them the whole text, and without watching a video of the play, let along going to the theatre. 3. There are fewer and smaller local libraries so kids cannot discover what they like as easily. There are fewer bookshops too, because people read less.

squigz 1y ago
> A friend of by daughter's went to a school where there were times when they had to sit and read a book - nothing kills enjoyment better than being forced to do something. You are telling kids its a chore you have to do, not something done for fun. This is, I think, a tricky line to walk. Reading is, like most things, a skill that must be practiced, and school is a good place to do so. I think a bigger part of this practice that kills enjoyment is not being able to choose what you're reading; of course kids are going to dislike reading when they're forced to read books or stories they have no interest in at all.
- graemep 1y ago
  They need to learn to read but not told "you must read" even if they have a choice. My kids learned to read with me (flashcards, Ladybird books) for fun (flashcards were a game), and then just carried on by themselves by picking up interesting books (which relies on having access to interesting books - having books at home makes a huge difference, as does access to libraries and bookshops)
  - Telemakhos 1y ago
    One of those inconvenient facts: kids who will be successful in life learn to read at home before starting formal schooling, and they have an adult who reads with them three or more times a week; kids who don't get that at home are much more likely to remain illiterate or to read at well below their grade level. It's inconvenient because there isn't anything anyone except the parent(s) can do about it, and the parent has already made that choice by the time the kid gets to school.
    - graemep 1y ago
      This seems to vary quite a bit across countries which suggests to me that something can be done about it - I cannot say what though. Parents can be encouraged and informed, to an extent, but the problem is that if they do not enjoy reading, you cannot pass on something you do not have yourself. Another problem in the UK is that I think policy makers think of reading as a life skill, and education in general as preparation for work, rather than as something to enjoy - at least for the hoi polloi (or "the gammon" to use a disturbingly common term), their own kids are different.
      - teamonkey 1y ago
        FYI “gammon” is not at all a synonym for “hoi polloi”.
    - watwut 1y ago
      > kids who will be successful in life learn to read at home before starting formal schooling What I did read was that early reading is not important to anything of importance, at best it can be a proxy to filter out neglected kids. Whether the kid can learn at that point is a question of brain development and you as a parent wont achieve nothing by trying to force it.
    - jacobolus 1y ago
      There's not a specific age where this work has to happen. Reading a variety of challenging books aloud to the class is one of the best things schoolteachers (especially early grades) can do for their students. Listening/language comprehension is incredibly important and underemphasized throughout most schooling. Reading per se (i.e. decoding written symbols into sounds/words, at least in English or similar languages) is a quite discrete skill that takes something like 6–12 months to learn to basic proficiency, working an average of, say, 15 minutes per day with direct guidance. It has some basic pre-requisites (attention span, interest, recognizing the alphabet), but can be done at any age; some kids might be willing to learn to read at age 3 or 4, but it can certainly be started at age 8, 12, 20, or 45. After that, speed and fluency improves with additional practice. Like anything, it's easier to get very fluent if people start younger because they have fewer other obligations. Someone who learned to read at age 4 and then spent hours reading for fun every day for 10 years is going to be far ahead of someone who learned a bit starting at age 8 but never had much help, and afterward only occasionally skimmed some magazines for the next 5 or 6 years but mostly spent their time on something else.
- Symbiote 1y ago
  Are children forced to read 'boring' books in the quiet reading time at school? I thought the point of that time was to read your own book (chosen from home, the public library, or the school library). As far as I know, school libraries still exist, and still have a wide selection of books. The books are rotated around schools in a county so the selection doesn't get stale.
- RyanOD 1y ago
  I agree. It's similar to learning multiplication tables. We can all agree that math is more than endless hours of drill and kill, but there are certain skills where rote memorization is beneficial. When doing AP calculus, for example, there really just isn't time to have to work out 12 x 13 on paper or (god forbid) grab a calculator.
CompoundEyes 1y ago
20-30 minutes of quiet reading time is recess for some of the introverts.
Loughla 1y ago
>management refused because it improve any of their metrics This is what everyone in the United States asked for. You wanted data driven decision making. Do not be surprised when the measure becomes the goal. Sorry if this sounds bitter, but I spent all day yesterday arguing with administration at a college that data driven decision making is only as good as the data you feed the system, and that specifically targeting metric improvement for its own sake is step one in the road to mind death.
- graemep 1y ago
  The case I was talking about was in the UK.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  We "wanted data driven decision making" because it beats vibe driven decision making. Even if data is meh.
  - strken 1y ago
    Does it? How do you know?
  - snapcaster 1y ago
    I would push back on that. I think often people's "vibes" are a lot closer to reality than extremely gamed metrics
    - ACCount37 1y ago
      There are people whose "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. And then there are people who think their "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. The second group is much, much larger. I don't trust vibes.
      - andsoitis 1y ago
        Do you trust your own intuition and judgment on at least some matters or topics where data is scarce, ambiguous, or contradictory?
notmyjob 1y ago
Stress and pressure due to the job market and housing costs. Smarter teens are drilling leetcode to stay competitive so they won’t be destitute when the boomers liquidate social security and deficit us all into eternal serfdom, or that’s what one of them told me when I asked why he didn’t spend more time reading novels.
- throawaywpg 1y ago
  im getting ready for a life of video gaming and living on a beach in a 3rd world country...
sandworm101 1y ago
I would say that they are reading fewer books but I think total number of hours reading is similar or growing. Reading tweets and text messages is still reading. My nephew has trouble learning to read, until he started playing minecraft and needed to read websites and instructions for mods and such. Then getting his first cellphone did away with any concept of reading difficulties. We have entire economies of people reading text on computers all day (ie my job). I would bet that the average person today read better/faster than their equivalent in centuries past. They are reading junk, but they are actually reading.
- Planktonne 1y ago
  A lot of the time they're skimming, rather than reading in depth. This is great for picking up key information quickly from a wiki, but it's also easy to miss something complex-but-vital.
panda-giddiness 1y ago
Unfortunately, addressing those issues would do little to address the underlying cause: We have many more ways to amuse ourselves compared to a generation ago, most of which require less "reach" for a dopamine hit (social media, netflix, video games, etc).
GuB-42 1y ago
I actually thing that millenials (i.e. the parents of 2025 children) read more than any other generation. Just not books. Until recently, the internet was mostly text, we didn't have the bandwidth for anything else. And it meant reading. Text messengers took the place of phone calls, even more reading. Text was also how video games told stories, more reading. And finally, subtitles, they keep growing in popularity, so even when you are watching videos, you are reading. GenX was all about TV, boomers spent more time outside and talking, and if you get far enough back, people didn't even know how to read. I think GenZ still read a lot, but now, audiovisual content is more prevalent on the internet than it was before. Also, audiobooks gained in popularity. Maybe we should make define what "reading" is. Is it actual reading, as in textual communication, or is it consuming books, but in this case, do audiobooks count? If you only count reading paper books, then sure, people read less, but that's because there are so many alternatives nowadays. And maybe some attention deficit.
araes 1y ago
Personally, it seems conspicuous that one of the largest drops in 5-8 and 8-18 occurred in 2023-2024, right when the world experienced a layoff surge [1] and sites like HN noted a significant drop in hiring [2]. "enjoy reading either very much or quite a lot" 2023 to 2024, 5 to 8: 75.3 to 64.7 2023 to 2024, 8 to 18: 43.4 to 34.6 ~250,000 layoffs @ ~1300 companies in 2023 [1]. Add another 100,000 and 1,000 if you take late 2022. And layoffs.fyi just tracks tech layoffs. The WARN database has similar results. Been averaging 300-400 a month since January 2023, vs ~100 / month in the 2021-2022 timeframe. [3] That's a lot of dislocation, moving to find jobs, household chaos, school shifting, and parents with different priorities. [1] "Layoff Charts Tab" https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1dvdssj/oc_hackernews_whos_hiring_and_who_wants_to_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1dvdssj/oc... [3] https://layoffdata.com/ https://layoffdata.com/

squigz 1y ago

> A friend of by daughter's went to a school where there were times when they had to sit and read a book - nothing kills enjoyment better than being forced to do something. You are telling kids its a chore you have to do, not something done for fun. This is, I think, a tricky line to walk. Reading is, like most things, a skill that must be practiced, and school is a good place to do so. I think a bigger part of this practice that kills enjoyment is not being able to choose what you're reading; of course kids are going to dislike reading when they're forced to read books or stories they have no interest in at all.

graemep 1y ago
They need to learn to read but not told "you must read" even if they have a choice. My kids learned to read with me (flashcards, Ladybird books) for fun (flashcards were a game), and then just carried on by themselves by picking up interesting books (which relies on having access to interesting books - having books at home makes a huge difference, as does access to libraries and bookshops)
- Telemakhos 1y ago
  One of those inconvenient facts: kids who will be successful in life learn to read at home before starting formal schooling, and they have an adult who reads with them three or more times a week; kids who don't get that at home are much more likely to remain illiterate or to read at well below their grade level. It's inconvenient because there isn't anything anyone except the parent(s) can do about it, and the parent has already made that choice by the time the kid gets to school.
  - graemep 1y ago
    This seems to vary quite a bit across countries which suggests to me that something can be done about it - I cannot say what though. Parents can be encouraged and informed, to an extent, but the problem is that if they do not enjoy reading, you cannot pass on something you do not have yourself. Another problem in the UK is that I think policy makers think of reading as a life skill, and education in general as preparation for work, rather than as something to enjoy - at least for the hoi polloi (or "the gammon" to use a disturbingly common term), their own kids are different.
    - teamonkey 1y ago
      FYI “gammon” is not at all a synonym for “hoi polloi”.
  - watwut 1y ago
    > kids who will be successful in life learn to read at home before starting formal schooling What I did read was that early reading is not important to anything of importance, at best it can be a proxy to filter out neglected kids. Whether the kid can learn at that point is a question of brain development and you as a parent wont achieve nothing by trying to force it.
  - jacobolus 1y ago
    There's not a specific age where this work has to happen. Reading a variety of challenging books aloud to the class is one of the best things schoolteachers (especially early grades) can do for their students. Listening/language comprehension is incredibly important and underemphasized throughout most schooling. Reading per se (i.e. decoding written symbols into sounds/words, at least in English or similar languages) is a quite discrete skill that takes something like 6–12 months to learn to basic proficiency, working an average of, say, 15 minutes per day with direct guidance. It has some basic pre-requisites (attention span, interest, recognizing the alphabet), but can be done at any age; some kids might be willing to learn to read at age 3 or 4, but it can certainly be started at age 8, 12, 20, or 45. After that, speed and fluency improves with additional practice. Like anything, it's easier to get very fluent if people start younger because they have fewer other obligations. Someone who learned to read at age 4 and then spent hours reading for fun every day for 10 years is going to be far ahead of someone who learned a bit starting at age 8 but never had much help, and afterward only occasionally skimmed some magazines for the next 5 or 6 years but mostly spent their time on something else.
Symbiote 1y ago
Are children forced to read 'boring' books in the quiet reading time at school? I thought the point of that time was to read your own book (chosen from home, the public library, or the school library). As far as I know, school libraries still exist, and still have a wide selection of books. The books are rotated around schools in a county so the selection doesn't get stale.
RyanOD 1y ago
I agree. It's similar to learning multiplication tables. We can all agree that math is more than endless hours of drill and kill, but there are certain skills where rote memorization is beneficial. When doing AP calculus, for example, there really just isn't time to have to work out 12 x 13 on paper or (god forbid) grab a calculator.

CompoundEyes 1y ago

20-30 minutes of quiet reading time is recess for some of the introverts.

Loughla 1y ago

>management refused because it improve any of their metrics This is what everyone in the United States asked for. You wanted data driven decision making. Do not be surprised when the measure becomes the goal. Sorry if this sounds bitter, but I spent all day yesterday arguing with administration at a college that data driven decision making is only as good as the data you feed the system, and that specifically targeting metric improvement for its own sake is step one in the road to mind death.

graemep 1y ago
The case I was talking about was in the UK.
ACCount37 1y ago
We "wanted data driven decision making" because it beats vibe driven decision making. Even if data is meh.
- strken 1y ago
  Does it? How do you know?
- snapcaster 1y ago
  I would push back on that. I think often people's "vibes" are a lot closer to reality than extremely gamed metrics
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    There are people whose "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. And then there are people who think their "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. The second group is much, much larger. I don't trust vibes.
    - andsoitis 1y ago
      Do you trust your own intuition and judgment on at least some matters or topics where data is scarce, ambiguous, or contradictory?

notmyjob 1y ago

Stress and pressure due to the job market and housing costs. Smarter teens are drilling leetcode to stay competitive so they won’t be destitute when the boomers liquidate social security and deficit us all into eternal serfdom, or that’s what one of them told me when I asked why he didn’t spend more time reading novels.

throawaywpg 1y ago
im getting ready for a life of video gaming and living on a beach in a 3rd world country...

sandworm101 1y ago

I would say that they are reading fewer books but I think total number of hours reading is similar or growing. Reading tweets and text messages is still reading. My nephew has trouble learning to read, until he started playing minecraft and needed to read websites and instructions for mods and such. Then getting his first cellphone did away with any concept of reading difficulties. We have entire economies of people reading text on computers all day (ie my job). I would bet that the average person today read better/faster than their equivalent in centuries past. They are reading junk, but they are actually reading.

Planktonne 1y ago
A lot of the time they're skimming, rather than reading in depth. This is great for picking up key information quickly from a wiki, but it's also easy to miss something complex-but-vital.

panda-giddiness 1y ago

Unfortunately, addressing those issues would do little to address the underlying cause: We have many more ways to amuse ourselves compared to a generation ago, most of which require less "reach" for a dopamine hit (social media, netflix, video games, etc).

GuB-42 1y ago

I actually thing that millenials (i.e. the parents of 2025 children) read more than any other generation. Just not books. Until recently, the internet was mostly text, we didn't have the bandwidth for anything else. And it meant reading. Text messengers took the place of phone calls, even more reading. Text was also how video games told stories, more reading. And finally, subtitles, they keep growing in popularity, so even when you are watching videos, you are reading. GenX was all about TV, boomers spent more time outside and talking, and if you get far enough back, people didn't even know how to read. I think GenZ still read a lot, but now, audiovisual content is more prevalent on the internet than it was before. Also, audiobooks gained in popularity. Maybe we should make define what "reading" is. Is it actual reading, as in textual communication, or is it consuming books, but in this case, do audiobooks count? If you only count reading paper books, then sure, people read less, but that's because there are so many alternatives nowadays. And maybe some attention deficit.

araes 1y ago

Personally, it seems conspicuous that one of the largest drops in 5-8 and 8-18 occurred in 2023-2024, right when the world experienced a layoff surge [1] and sites like HN noted a significant drop in hiring [2]. "enjoy reading either very much or quite a lot" 2023 to 2024, 5 to 8: 75.3 to 64.7 2023 to 2024, 8 to 18: 43.4 to 34.6 ~250,000 layoffs @ ~1300 companies in 2023 [1]. Add another 100,000 and 1,000 if you take late 2022. And layoffs.fyi just tracks tech layoffs. The WARN database has similar results. Been averaging 300-400 a month since January 2023, vs ~100 / month in the 2021-2022 timeframe. [3] That's a lot of dislocation, moving to find jobs, household chaos, school shifting, and parents with different priorities. [1] "Layoff Charts Tab" https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1dvdssj/oc_hackernews_whos_hiring_and_who_wants_to_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1dvdssj/oc... [3] https://layoffdata.com/ https://layoffdata.com/