We are in a reading recession
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that reading scores for American 15-year-olds dropped 14 points on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, a global exam. This drop brings U.S. students to their near-lowest point in 25 years.
And it’s not just students who aren’t reading. It’s everyone. Yet reading, especially in print rather than digital, is critical for knowledge retention.
In an article by Naomi S. Baron, Professor of Linguistics Emerita at American University, she asks, “Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper? And are listening and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material? The answers to both questions are often “no,” as I discuss in my book “How We Read Now,” released in March 2021. The reasons relate to a variety of factors, including diminished concentration, an entertainment mindset, and a tendency to multitask while consuming digital content.”
I find this to be true, at least for myself. I am a dual-format reader. I’ll read before bed, then find where I left off the next morning on Audible to continue “reading” on my morning commute. Occasionally, while listening, I’ll realize my mind has wandered for the last several minutes, and I have no idea what just happened in the book. Then I must rewind several times to listen again. This doesn’t happen when I am immersed in a print book.
According to You.gov, an online market research and data analytics firm, 40 percent of Americans read ZERO books in 2025. None, zip, nada! I can’t fathom this. Approximately a quarter of Americans read between 1 and 4 books, 13 percent read 5 to 9 books, and about 20 percent read 10 or more books. I am in the less than 4 percent who read 50 or more books, although I typically average about 40 books per year (6 percent category). You can see why reading no books is bonkers to me.
Some other fun trivia according to You.gov:
19 percent of U.S. adult citizens account for 82 percent of all books read in 2025.
The 4 percent of Americans who say they read 50 or more books alone account for 46 percent of all books read.
Someone who read just 3 books in 2025 did more book reading than 57 percent of Americans.
Reading 5 books means you read more than two-thirds of Americans in 2025.
Reading 10 books means you read more than 81 percent of Americans in 2025.
The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch writes that we are in a post-literate age. In an interview on PBS Newshour, she shares that statistically, the lack of reading books is independent of our literacy rate, which is historically very high.
“And in many ways, we're probably reading more words than ever, if you think about the number of e-mails and text messages and social media posts you're reading.”
“Like, we're inundated with words and we're surrounded with them. But what's happening is that this kind of -- these number of words that we're swimming in has made it so that it's almost so difficult to focus on any serious or complex work of literature for an extended period of time. And so it's not a crisis of literacy. It's that we are entering a post-literate age.”
Much of this has to do with technology and how it is reshaping our brain. Attention span has most certainly decreased. In 2016, it was an average of just 47 seconds. Bring in AI to analyze data, write content, and synthesize text, along with ever-changing social media utilities (reels, stories), and it’s no wonder we can’t pay attention.
While not everybody needs to read lengthy content, we are seeing major deficits in critical thinking and the ability to understand complex ideas when we only consume short content or use AI to generate ideas. Using our brains for work is like lifting weights for muscle development. Thinking stimulates high neural connectivity associated with creativity, memory load, and semantic processing. And it’s much more satisfying.