Fewer than half of US adults read a book last year. Even fewer read an actual novel, and the trend is looking worse still for teenagers. Is it over?
>america becomes more diverse people read lesswell that's problematic
>>25247525https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MRTSSM451211USNBook sales are about the same as they were back in 94, even with competition with streaming video games etc
>>25247529That can’t be it, the countries that read the most are diverse af.The problem is the garbage education system that doesn’t ensure that lets anyone graduate whether they actually know how to read or not.
>>25247525Do you understand how retarded hick muricans are? It's like a different species. Go down to the rust belt, or anywhere in the south and you will be amazed how fucking idiotic those people are. It's a culture thing, but on a huge scale.
>>25247534US population1994: 263 million 2026: 342 million If it's the stayed the same, it's gone down a lot relatively..
>>25247588>>25247534Not only that, the sales aren't adjusted for inflation either, so it's far less.
Can't really blame people, schools basically teach you to hate reading.
>According to ISTAT (Italy’s National Institute of Statistics), roughly 60% of Italians did not read a single book for leisure in the last year. This means that, by that specific metric, a majority of the population does not engage with books at all.>Educational Barriers: Reading is highly correlated with education level in Italy. Among university graduates, the reading rate is around 70%, but it plummets to below 30% for those with only a middle-school education. >The Digital Distraction: In 2025/2026 reports, researchers noted that while "BookTok" made reading trendy for teens, adults are increasingly spending their "leisure hours" on smartphones and streaming services rather than long-form text.>The Geographic Divide: In Southern Italy and the Islands, the percentage of non-readers is significantly higher (sometimes exceeding 70–75%), often linked to a lower density of public libraries and independent bookstores compared to the North.I would assume this is pretty consistent in different regions. There's just no incentive to read outside of work/studies because there are much more engaging things you can do (video games, socials, netflix etc).
>>25247525So 129,960,000 Americans still read a book last year.What’s the problem?
>>25247588Relatively speaking they have probably gone up in context of reading books since all those books on hobbies, crafts, basic life skills, and DIY and the like (which were a massive section in book stores of the 90s and 00s) have been replaced by the internet along with all those general reference books. Those sorts of books you don't really read like home repair manuals that you just look up what you need when you need it are extinct and most book sales now are books of the sort one actually reads.
>>25247594sales are tracked by unit not dollar value>>25247588Everything has gone down with the rise of social media brainrot. The fact that books have stayed the same is a good sign.
why do people find it so hard to enjoy reading?
>>25247640most books are trash, and you have to actively engage with the text in order for it to be read. A movie can play a boring scene in the back ground while you don't pay attention, a book on the other hand has to be actively read to get through the boring scene.
>>25247598This, young people have had their attention spans destroyed by screens. To make them love reading, the boys should be administered progressive doses of YA adventure /lit/ and shonen manga, and the girls vampire/minotaur web novels, until they're capable of sitting down and reading the classics.
Judging by some GoodReads reviews I've seen recently, a lot of people who DO read ought to be forcibly blinded to prevent them from reading. Only patricians, like me, should be allowed to enjoy literature.
>>25247525So what? Literally who cares.
>>25247588>+60millionWow! Birthrates must be through the roof
>>25247525I don't care.I either become landed gentry in the world to come or I die defending my stead from the illiterate mob like picrel
>>25247731Half of Mexico moved to the USA
How many “Americans” even speak English anymore?
>>25247711kek thisShit this board is probably the best literature discussion on the planet and most of you should be killed on principle
>>25247525novels are pure shit now, publishing industry is for very hyper liberal retarded women nobody wants to read that shit
>>25247994yeah
>>25247525hoi polloi don't matter
>>25247525>Is it over?been so for a while
>>25247994This. There is simply no live literary culture to be a part of or get excited about. Only genre-fiction and videogames can still give that sense of taking part in a dynamic, evolving conversation.
>>25248050>>25247994Cope and seethe.>I have retreated into children's fantasy because.....the world is le bad!
>>25248063>the world is le bad!It kind of le is doe.
>>25247535>philippines #4what>south africa #15doubt
Reading is actually so good it feels like a cheat code at times. Like, why are you even on TV/vidya slop?
>>25248076It costs good money to upgrade TV/hardware too, and people argue for hours over this stuff.
>>25248050what did you think about reading duck dynasty guys latest from hobby lobby while eating your chick fil a waiting for church to start on wednesday
>>25248063I don't partake, but that's obviously why those things draw bigger crowds. >>25248084I've never set foot on American soil, so sounds exciting and foreign!
>>25248050>no live literary culturei think air1 is less annoying than klove but i like what the church down the street plays. livingston is the best at songs that dont expressly mention God and are thus secular
Take away>femgooner smut>young adults novels>"you're the most damaged person alive and it's not your fault" pop psychology>adults over 55How many people actually read?
>>25248147this board, academia, and your haphazard social recluses (99% of whom are on this board anyways). That's it. If a young person's reading, they're either on here or they're in college studying it, because there is basically nowhere else to have even the most superficial of discussions about literature as an art.As an 18yo myself, I can't imagine a worse time to be young and enjoy reading. It's genuinely disheartening, to see how many of my peers unabashedly hate reading and how the cultural view of it is warped beyond reparation. I can't count the amount of times I've been called "performative" because I read classic literature in my free time. And it's not like I'm in some backwards hick region; I attend a public highschool that has consistently ranked top #20 NATIONWIDE for its duration, with GPAs averaging the mid-high 3.0s, and I'm still far and away better read than literally anyone else here, including my teachers. I'd reckon the number of true readers to be somewhere in the range of 1 in 50,000, and even that may be overselling it.
>>25248212Do you get any though?
>>25247812About 38%. What does that have to do with anything?
>>25248212>If a young person's reading, they're either on here or they're in college studyingi.e. no one goes to church
>>25248251No, lmao. I'll admit to playing vidya (text-based CRPGs) about as much as I read, so I'm barely even a "true reader" by my own standards, and yet I'm still miles ahead of everyone else, which is really just depressing. It's not like I'm a plotfag and I would consider myself intelligent enough to pick up on some deeper themes, I won't be arrogant enough to say I can comprehend maybe even half of what Shakespeare, Melville, etc were going for, though I do love the prose and characters and I'll definitely keep rereading them throughout my life. ATM I'm halfway through IJ, and it's actually one of the more engaging and "page-turning" books I've read, funnily enough. Also I think the narrator's supposed to be James O. Himself.
>>25247534Bookstores also sell comics and Manga, which are considerable portion of book-adjacent material read by lower-literacy Millenials and Gen Z read. Considering the number has stayed constant but population has grown and comics have invaded the book space, this statistic argues more for the decline of literacy.
>>25247704I've never seen the "trash to culture" reading pipeline ever work out. In my school, plenty of low-performing kids were encouraged to read manga, but they'd just stay in the kiddie pool and never read anything else. It's why I roll my eyes at the defenses of modern women reading fantasy smut or audiobook as if it's valid. You can't claim to be a marathon runner if your experience is only walking. I don't know why we claim reading to be a universal moral good when we don't force other hobbies on all human beings. I think some humans, maybe the majority, have the ability to become proficient readers. But I also work in education and I can say there is definite correlation between reading, possessing patience or self-sufficiency, and developing critical thinking skills. I'm just not sure if the reading causes it or the other traits enable someone to better enjoy reading. I think literacy should be encouraged to promote those traits in society, but I really couldn't give a fuck if John Doe spends his free time reading.
>>25247525>dignified leisureIf you want high and widespread culture, shareholder boomers have to take a hit.>>25248212>I can't imagine a worse time to be young and enjoy reading.The younger you are, the more you ought to force feed, at least when it comes to fiction. The sooner you've found your personal canon, the better.
>only 38% of people read a short story or longer text over the last 12 monthsI literally don't believe this. Straight up think this is false. Even as a non-reader I read short stories all the time while not realizing it through things like creepypastas or fanfiction/literotica/AO3.Even if you ignore all men and just counted women over 2025 that read a single fanfiction or ao3 porn slop (counts as short story) it would be above 38%
>>25247534What are the books being sold though? Is it literotica color coded for booktok backgrounds and Manga for men or is it actual regular novels like what it used to be in 94?
>>25248574The pipeline from manga to Dostoevsky has always been more wishful than real. The people who crossed it would have crossed anyway; the right book found them at the right moment and the intermediate step was probably irrelevant. Whether sustained attention is something you can build in someone who doesn't already find it rewarding, I am not sure anyone has demonstrated this.>>25248212The "performative" accusation is worth sitting with. It means they noticed.>>25248609The survey almost certainly means books specifically. This distinction matters.
>>25247640as someone who loves reading, it can be really hard to find a good book once exhausting whatever little trove you have that fits your mood at the time. i pirate everything and have thousands to choose from and even then it can be a chore to find something new to read at any given night that isnt just beaten by re-reading an old fave. i imagine for normies who have barely read anything the idea of spending $30 and then not meshing with the book and having to do this over and over just puts it in the too hard basket versus other media. thanks to netflix tv and movies u can just flip through and figure out if u like it in a few minutes or so. and most people have a netflix subscription.
>>25248624Try keeping your selection smaller than 100. I noticed on myself that I read more with my ereader having a very small selection so that I don't get choice paralysis. Just randomly click something and start reading.My personal main issue is a tendency to DNF books around the 30% mark when I feel like I know what the book is trying to say and the tone and concepts it's going to explore so I feel no need to actually read the rest.
>>25247525We have these threads all the time and what’s the point?>anecdote about school>gloating>MY country is doing better>muh phones muh screens>muh FEMALESWhat policy are you setting? None? Ok. What children do you parent? None. Do you read? Ok. What is the perennial interest in the topic on a board full of people who reject society and norms in the first place? It’s like incels saying the same five things about women for a fucking decade. Over and over again. You’re trapped in hell doing the same dance with engagement bots.
>>25247598This pretty much hits the nail on the head. Reading in school is seen as something you ought to do, not something you want to do.
>>25247545Its people like you that make me want to genocide "smart" people
>>25248350Do you get any though?
>>25247609Billions must READ
>>25247525We're a dying breed. The novel (and literature more generally) is now a niche art, equivalent to contemporary classical music or freeform jazz
>>25249590who will write the great incel-misogynist novel? harold covington started with the brigade but pivoted to using it as a recrutiment ad for a non existent terrorist army dedicated to racial revanchism. if harold covingtons army was real, or not dedicated primarily to racial revanchism, and his discussion of divorce wasnt just a few chapters, he could of motivated people. by now, its standard to question every accusation of rape you hear about on 4chan, except that marital rape, well, that man was weak and stupid and now i can score with that woman. iranian men would never listen to a bitch say my husband raped me and therefore i need to take his kids and all his stuff. iranian men would tell her to go to marriage counseling with their pastor, because iranians are Christians and amerifucks worship slaanesh and give mutant drugs to their own children to turn them into slaaneshi mutants
>>25250037What the fuck are you talking about?
>>25247525>Is it over?not for me
>>25248609I'm not sure why you think fanfic is a common thing people read. I've been terminally online for 20 years and I don't read fanfic, much less most normies. Fanfic is written and read almost entirely by a small minority of spergy girls and women.
>>25250083the thing is, the great misogynist novel needs to be long enough to start with the mom divorcing the dad for marital rape and describe how the son gets groomed by psychoTheRapist into trooning out and the daughter runs around manipulating one man after another as she gets older and more aggressive until she gets her divorce. but it wont be read by anyone because it isnt a power fantasy or a postmodern inverse power fantasy
>>25250037Iran has as shit a fertility rate as Europe
>>25247525This feels like an existential crisis for our nation. ZOG is parasitizing the minds of our children. Will young people start reading again or is it over?>>25250128I like it. I would read it.
