If you love nothing more than devouring a page-turner in your free time, you're becoming a rare breed. Reading for pleasure among adults in the United States has fallen dramatically in the last two decades. A new study from the University of Florida and University College London, published in iScience, found that leisure reading, or reading for fun, has declined by 40% in the last 20 years.
People still read constantly for pleasure. It’s just on their pocket rectangles looking at addictive social apps. Just like how long-form video (cinema) has fallen in favor of bite sized pieces, so too has long-form prose.
“Reading” is also not a standalone activity like it was decades ago. People engage in all sorts of activities that incorporate reading but aren’t exclusively reading. You might read short stories in an RPG like Skyrim by picking up a virtual book, but if someone asked you what you were doing, you were “playing a video game”, not “reading”. You might be scrolling through a long article posted on Reddit, but you’re not “reading”. You’re “browsing Reddit”.