The Decline of Reading
By 
As I often say, the saddest words in the English language are “I don’t read fiction.” And there is no question in my mind that the decline of reading and the rise of fascism are deeply connected.
Fewer Americans than ever before are reading for pleasure, according to a new study released Wednesday, declining 40 percent in the past 20 years.
Only 16 percent of Americans age 15 and over read for leisure every day in 2023, according to a study from researchers at the University of Florida and University College London that was published Wednesday in the journal iScience, compared with 28 percent of Americans in 2003.
The new findings come as Americans’ attention spans and print book sales are in decline, and artificial intelligence technology is aiming to summarize knowledge as quickly as possible.
While there’s evidence thetrend began in the 1940s, this most recent decline in reading for pleasure is “significant,” Jill Sonke, co-director of the EpiArts Lab at the University of Florida, said in a news release.
The study — which was based on time-use data from nearly 240,000 Americans between 2003 and 2023 and excluded 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic — found that time adults spent reading to children did not drop during that period. But only a small portion of participants — 2 percent — read to kids every day.
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Surveys from the polling company YouGov, for example, found that 46 percent of Americans read no books in 2023. In that group of nonreaders, 56 percent of them lacked a college degree while27 percent had graduatedcollege.
In the University of Florida and University College London analysis, participants with college degrees in 2023 were nearly three times more likely to read for pleasure daily than those with a high school degree or less.
The study also found racial, economic and gender differences in reading habits. Women, White participants and those with higher incomes were more likely to spend time reading each day, the study found, while men, Black participants and those with lower incomes engaged in less reading for pleasure.
Hard to know anything when you know nothing. Hard to feel anything for others when you spend your days immersed in your phone looking to dunk on people or read other dunks.
There is a solution. Turn off your fucking phone. Get offline. Read. Do the fucking work people. There are zero excuses. And yes, that includes reading LGM less if you spend all your time here. We’ll still be here.