Does it matter that Britons are reading less than ever before?

Telegraph

3 days ago

The last time 33-year-old Barney Iley lost himself in a book was in 2017, when he read Middlemarch by George Eliot. 'It blew my brains out,' he says, recalling the 'gratifying' time spent reading what Martin Amis once called the greatest-ever British novel.
But that was eight years ago. 'I don't do that now – read books,' he adds. 'Now I put reading on a pedestal. Reading a book would be a magnificent achievement. It used to be that the equivalent of reading a book would be a stroll; now it's a marathon. That's tragic.'
What Iley describes is the loss of reading as a leisure pursuit – either as something fun, like watching a film, or something that's good for you, like going to the gym. His reading brain is 'like a muscle that needs exercising', he says, adding that now, 'if it had a body, it would be this incredibly unfit, overweight person'.
Iley is far from alone. New research puts him among the 27 million or so adults in the UK who say they do not regularly read by choice; 47 per cent of adults, according to The Reading Agency charity. Here, 'reading' could include anything from online journalism and books, to e-books, audiobooks, graphic novels and social media posts. The charity's latest snapshot of the state of adult reading shows that those aged 16 to 24 years old are the least engaged with reading, with 61 per cent identifying as either lapsed readers or non-readers (those who do not read regularly and never have), which was the highest of any age group. Men are more likely than women to avoid reading, with 15 per cent of male respondents identifying as 'non-readers' compared with 10 per cent of women.
Stu Hennigan, an author and senior librarian with Leeds Libraries, says: 'This is a complex issue, but the main practical factors are time and access.' Hennigan has watched library provision wither since the start of austerity in 2010. He continues, 'It's easier to zone out passively consuming entertainment through a screen via binge-watching a series, for example, than actively trying to engage a frazzled brain with a book.'
On paper, Iley, an Oxford University English literature graduate, is someone who should be able to manage the odd novel. Indeed, for most of his 20s, reading was something Iley, who lives in London and works in political communications, enjoyed as a 'leisure activity with self-improving overtones'. He adds: 'Reading was something I would do for pleasure.'
That qualifier – 'for pleasure' – is the key here. We're not talking about the ability to read and write – any number of apps from Speechify to NaturalReader can help with that – but rather reading to inform and entertain oneself, which is something that barely a quarter of adults are doing daily, according to The Reading Agency. A separate YouGov survey is bleaker still, finding that 40 per cent of Britons haven't read or listened to a single book in the past 12 months.
'Use it or lose it'
Nick Burgess is a 50-year-old corporate lawyer who read 'prodigiously' as a child. 'I used to pick up a book, and then someone would tap on my shoulder a few hours later. That is gone. It's as if someone has taken away a basic skill that I had,' he says.
While it's easy to blame smartphone scrolling, 'you make time for things that are important,' says Burgess. He continues: 'Previously, books were as important to me as sport, eating and other things I enjoyed. I don't think this is a time-management problem.' Every attempt to kickstart his reading routine – from picking easy, short, universally acclaimed books to old favourites such as James Clavell's Shogun – fails, and he can't explain why.
Researching this crisis in reading, I have spent months interviewing dozens of librarians, academics, publishing executives, neuroscientists and futurists. I wanted to know if it even matters if fewer people – at every age, from children to boomers – revel in the written word. After all, stories come in many forms, from video games such as The Legend of Zelda, which give players narrative powers, to bite-sized 'minisodes' featuring the animated dog Bluey.
As a professional literary critic, who lives in a house with enough books to start a library, I'll admit I am biased. I know it sounds as if I think I'm better than everyone else because I read. But what if non-readers are missing out on more than just another way to pass the time?
'There is a maxim in neuroscience: use it or lose it,' says Maryanne Wolf, the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Our brains were not innately programmed to read – reading is a learnt skill, she tells me. 'When you do not employ those processes, they atrophy.'
Reading changes neural plasticity in the brain, which in turn helps to build 'cognitive reserve', says Christelle Langley, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. She cites one study from 2011 that found that reading enlarges the hippocampus region, which is important for learning and memory and one of the first to show neuropathological changes caused by Alzheimer's disease. 'It is possible that by not reading we are more susceptible to the changes of decline in ageing,' she warns.
You might argue that functional, digital reading – emails and social media posts – still counts. One study in the US found the average person consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day, or up to 100,000 words a day. But this just isn't the same.
Andreas Schleicher, the director for education and skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, says: 'The data suggest if you stop reading complex books [of more than 100 pages], you also lose out on digital literacy.
'That's the interesting part of the story. If your literacy declines, you become a more passive consumer of whatever [something like] ChatGPT tells you. You're not reflecting on it. You're not looking at different aspects of the narrative. That's the bigger risk,' he adds.
Wolf goes farther, arguing that the decline in reading has societal implications. 'We will no longer have the beauty of what reading can give us: the empathy of understanding others in a way that is unique to reading. This will [affect] how we view others in society. It will make us close down to being critically analytic, which has ramifications for our democracy.' She distinguishes between non-fiction and fiction, with the latter appearing to increase our capacity for fellow feeling.
'Books are engines for empathy, they build imagination, and they provide respite from a busy world for young minds and adult minds,' says Joanna Prior, the chief executive of Pan Macmillan, Britain's fourth-biggest publisher – as well she might, but her argument is convincing.
'You're not being told what to think, not being given the image fully formed,' she continues. 'You have an active part to play in absorbing the information and telling the story. That is, I think, a very precious part of your development as a human being. I don't think any other art form quite delivers that.'
'Boys don't get fiction after a certain age'
I'd never thought about reading this way. It was something I grew up doing to fill time – it was the 1980s, after all. Even now I still find reading at night the best way to fall asleep, a habit I've passed on to my children. Anthony Horowitz, who has spent nearly five decades writing novels for almost every age group, understands my somnolent passion.
'Reading a book is an act of enormous creativity, very much on a par with writing itself,' he says, 'When reading, you are doing something quite miraculous: you are taking hieroglyphics, squiggles on a page, turning them into words, words into sentences. You are seeing worlds and peopling those worlds with characters and listening to them speak.'
Horowitz's Alex Rider teenage spy series got children such as my friend's son, Billy, churning through novels in primary school, only for him to abandon the habit as adolescence took hold. 'I haven't got time,' is Billy's succinct explanation. His mother responds: 'What that translates to is 'I don't make the time' in between school, Xbox, sport and, let's face it, the mobile phone, with Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and sports coverage.'
Billy is far from alone. Another mother tells me: 'I have three teenage sons and have not seen them pick up a book since the age of 12. One even got a 7 in GCSE English Literature, despite not reading any of the set texts. Boys don't seem to 'get' fiction after a certain age. Is the link just b----y phones?'
New figures from the National Literacy Trust released in June reveal that fewer children enjoy reading in their free time than at any time since the charity started collecting data in 2005. Just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 reported enjoying reading 'very much' or 'quite a lot' in 2025, which at 32.7 per cent is almost 2 percentage points lower than the previous year. Compared with 2005, the drop is far sharper, with 36 per cent fewer children and young people now saying they enjoy reading in their free time. Meanwhile, the number of eight to 18-year-olds who report reading something in their free time every day has halved in the past two decades, from 38.1 per cent to 18.7 per cent.
This applies even to some English A-level students. 'They do not seem to like reading, and I often get the impression they haven't read the texts fully,' one secondary school English teacher tells me. 'The first thing they look at is how many pages a novel has, coupled with a groan.'
The situation continues for university-age students. One recent English literature graduate from Newcastle University admits to resorting to AI overviews to cope with her two Victorian modules. 'It's nuts,' she says, 'I'd be sitting in seminars and no one wanted to start speaking – because no one had read the book.'
The worry is that teenagers who don't like books are more likely to become adults who don't like books. I would argue they simply haven't found the right title, but not everyone wants to hear that. Often, I can't even tell my own daughter what I think she might enjoy next (Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, for the record).
'Some people just don't understand that reading is for them, I think,' Ann Cleeves, the Whitley Bay-based author behind the popular ITV drama Vera, tells me. 'It's a class thing. If you've been to school, and you've been put off school because you haven't enjoyed it, you leave and might find libraries intimidating.' A charity Cleeves has founded locally, Reading for Wellbeing, is attempting to change that via 'lots and lots' of book groups in the North East. It doesn't judge its readers' tastes, whether that's erotic fiction because someone enjoyed EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey or Toshikazu Kawaguchi's popular Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. 'Our philosophy is if you're having a good time with a book, then it's a good book,' says Cleeves.
It is advice that more schools ought to follow, I realise after talking to Sam Smith, a secondary school librarian at St Mary's Catholic School in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. Changing the perception of reading from 'being a chore to being fun' is key, he says. In his library, anything goes, from romance and dark fantasy ('not necessarily a problem as long as it's for their age range') to plenty of football-related material, including unsold Premier League programmes, his top tip for reluctant readers.
Making something fun is often as easy as doing it with fun people, which is why book clubs remain a phenomenon. Data from event listing companies such as Meetup and Eventbrite point to a boom in book-based gatherings. I can vouch for loving the regular evenings I spend with three friends talking about what we've read – although we call it 'friends with books' rather than a book club. Lucas Oakeley, a debut novelist from south London, runs a monthly men-only gathering, which meets in the foyer of London's National Theatre. 'Book clubs tend to be majority women. We've found fiction is a great way to talk about the world; people open up a lot,' he says. John Boyne's Earth, about a sexual assault case in the football world, was the last pick; other choices have ranged from Percival Everett's The Trees to Jilly Cooper's Imogen. 'Half the people come because they want to get back into reading. Life is hard, life is fast: a book club gives you a reason to set aside the time,' he adds.
The shift to audio
The demise of reading, however, is a greater cultural shift than any number of ad-hoc meet-ups can fix. 'There is an intergenerational challenge which seems to be growing all the time,' says Teresa Cremin, a professor of education at The Open University.
'We are not just talking about a decline with kids but with adults, too. That's serious, because it means we are shifting as humans,' says Cremin, citing figures from the 2024 Reading Agency report that showed nearly one quarter of people aged 16 to 24 have never seen themselves as readers. 'We are the reading role models for our young. If a quarter of potential parents don't have that sense of identity as a reader, that will create problems for their children,' she adds.
Audiobooks are one obvious solution; according to the Publishers Association, UK downloads increased by 17 per cent between 2022 and 2023. 'The shift to audio is huge. Listening, reading, we are happy with either,' says Prior, pointing out that growth isn't coming at the expense of the overall book market. 'We are getting new people coming to books who weren't reading previously. That is exciting.'
Technology, clearly, isn't all bad news. 'We can't think of ourselves in opposition to the phone,' adds Prior, citing the reading communities that exist on TikTok as one screen-based positive. Surprisingly AI might even offer another way back into the book habit. Many people already use Blinkist, a Berlin-based company that has provided 15-minute summaries of hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books, in both text and audio format, since 2021. Just think, you could knock off Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens and Charles Dickens's Bleak House while walking the dog. Then again, is this even new? Reader's Digest, the magazine that started as a collection of condensed articles, closed down its UK print edition last year but still offers bite-sized Fiction Favourites.
Rohit Talwar is a futurist who advises blue-chip companies. New ways to consume content, possibly via brain implants, are on the way, he says. 'People will have implants, or some other mechanism, digitally downloading information to their brains, including digital forms of stories. If that information is a novel, does that still count as reading if you haven't consumed it with your eyes?'
He adds: 'The nature of us reading and engaging with content will change quite significantly again over the next five to 10 years. Virtual and augmented reality will put us in stories in a more immersive way, such as being a character. We will be able to follow the [narrative] from the perspective of different characters, almost as if you are in a live performance.'
Regaining the ability to read
What we won't get from AI summaries or plot narratives zapped into our hippocampus, says Horowitz, is the 'intellectual growth' that comes from working through passages of text. Young people using digital shortcuts 'are missing out on something which I have always found to be wonderful: intellectual curiosity,' he adds.
Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and the author of The Reading Mind, is blunt about cutting corners. 'It's analogous to 'You get what you pay for'. The amount of time you spend thinking about ideas is very important to the duration those ideas will stick in your memory.'
Vicki Perrin is the chief executive of The Queen's Reading Room, a charity-cum-book club. She would like to find a reading equivalent of 10,000 steps or eating your five-a-day of fruit and vegetables. 'Why not start with reading a book for five minutes a day?' she suggests. Eight years ago, John Hayes, a 56-year-old employment lawyer, tried something similar to revive his lost reading mojo. 'I felt I was missing out,' he says. 'I wanted greater stillness, away from a screen, so I forced myself to read 10 pages per day – about an average book length per month.
'Now, reading is one of the most enjoyable things I do; an interior, private world away from the maelstrom of family and law. Away from demands. And now, I must get back to my biography of Thomas More, the new one by Joanne Paul…'