Anyone who has spent time on a college campus lately has probably heard laments from faculty about their students’ reading habits, or rather nonreading habits. Such complaints are more than an unfounded nostalgia for a bygone age.
Reading—not just any kind of reading, but reading long, complex, challenging books—is quickly vanishing from the American scene.
As Sunil Iyengar, who directs the Office of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, observed in 2024, approximately 49% of adults reported reading at least one book in the past year. That compares with nearly 55% of adults who reported the same 10 years earlier.
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