Reading for fun plunges to ‘crisis’ level for US students

Amid a cascade of devastating reports showing classroom test scores plummeting nationwide, U.S. students have also hit a record low in their leisure time: Casual reading has collapsed. 

Only 14 percent of students say they read for fun every day, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report released recently, down 3 percentage points from 2020 and 13 since 2012. The report indicates 31 percent of students never or hardly ever read for fun.

Experts say the relationship between reading and academic success is crucial at a time when students are facing roadblocks to reading for fun, ranging from social media to not being introduced to books that interest them.

“We definitely have a crisis on our hands, and what’s wonderful is I really definitely think that we have an antidote for what ails us here,” said Sasha Quinton, executive vice president and president for Scholastic School Reading Events. “If we focus on that book joy and just connecting kids to funny stories and explosive stories and things that sparked their interest, then they are learning to read and they are on the path to being lifelong readers.”

The crisis Quinton speaks of has built up through multiple factors, one of the biggest arguably being technology and social media, which is reaching younger and younger children. 

Common Sense Media reported in 2015 that most children had a phone by the age of 14. In 2022, Stanford Medicine found that the average age had reached 11, a critical point where the love of reading is either nourished or dissipates.

“It’s really important to know what the average age now that kids have their own smartphone is, and we know that we lose our kids around 9, where they stop reading for pleasure,” said Quinton.

The NAEP report released at the end of June revealed reading scores for the average 13-year-old dropped to their lowest point since 2004. Among the lowest-performing students, reading scores were thrown back to levels not seen since before 1971.

The importance of letting students choose books that interest them is paramount for experts who say children need to be able to relate to the books to want to spend time with them.

Miah Daughtery, the vice president of academic advocacy focused on literacy at NWEA, a nonprofit research organization, points to tracking by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center that shows a lack of diversity in published authors.

“If we take a look at it from a publishing perspective, the books that are even being published reflect a really small percentage of what’s available to students that reflect the balance of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, then you layer on top of that disorder that national conversation and rhetoric and I would even say insistence on book challenges and bans,” Daughtery said. “So all of those things together are not creating strong conditions that would consistently encourage independent reading.”

Book bans have been a hot topic in many Republican-led states that have created processes to make it easier to get titles critics deem inappropriate out of schools. PEN America, a free speech group, recorded a record number of book bans at the beginning of the current school year, with more than 1,500 titles removed from classrooms or school libraries.

It is also important to understand the stress and environment children have experienced these past 10 years under the youth mental health crisis — particularly once it was kicked into high gear by the COVID-19 pandemic — and the effect that can have on reading. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System showed in the decade leading up to the pandemic, feelings of sadness and hopelessness among young people skyrocketed 40 percent. 

“If a student is in an environment where there is any amount of stress, that’s going to sort of raise their baseline level beyond what’s going to last for focus, and reading is not going to happen,” said Brooke Wilkins, a reading specialist at the Mid Valley School District in Pennsylvania. 

While the trend against reading for fun has been going on for quite some time, many advocates are optimistic that educators and parents can reverse it. 

Parents are the first line of defense, as experts stress the importance of reading with children and leading by example to help their children choose a book instead of their phone. 

“I do think there’s going to be a turning point, certainly, as you saw with the decline in NAEP scores on reading, that everyone’s attention is to the issue of reading, so I think there’s been a renewed effort. Much of that is on teaching children the skills needed to become successful readers,” said Erin Bailey, the director of content for Reading is Fundamental. 

Educators are highly aware of the issue and have been working to find solutions to get their students excited about reading. 

Daughtery, who is also a former teacher, said she implemented a tactic with her high school seniors that seemed to help kick-start their reading. 

“It’s called the reading minute. You pick a book; the book doesn’t matter, right? And then, you as the adult, you have to read the book and you find the cliffhanger spot in the book, like where the most exciting things happen. You read, literally for 1 minute, it’s a read-aloud of the cliffhanger, but you stop it right before the cliffhanger,” she said, adding of the seniors: “They’d be like, ‘Oh, Miss Daughtery, what happened?’ and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know — you got to read the book.’“

—Updated at 11 a.m.