Americans are spending less time hitting the books.
More than 1 in 4 adults haven’t picked up a book — paper or electronic — in the past year, Pew Research Center poll says.
It’s worse among the working class. A full 44% of adults with a high school diploma or less admitted they had not read a book in the past year. Similarly, households with incomes of $30,000 or less (36%) were more likely than households earning $75,000 or more (14%) not to have read a book in the past year.
Behind this is a trend that fewer and fewer people are reading for pleasure. The share of Americans who actively read for pleasure on any given day has fallen each year incrementally. Since 2004, the number of active readers has dropped by more than 30%, according to the 2018 American Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Men are more likely to drop reading entirely, according to the numbers. The share of men reading for pleasure on any given day dropped from 25% in 2004 to 15% in 2017. Among women, the numbers dropped from 31% to 22%.
We’re not giving up books for piano, hiking, or crocheting. We’re giving up books for television. The average amount of time watching TV dramatically increased between 2004 and 2017, while the time spent reading dropped, the American Time Use Survey reported. On average, U.S. adults spend about 2 hours and 45 minutes per day watching TV. At the same time, an active reader in the United States spends about 17 minutes per day reading.
Our days are getting busier, and as they do, the way we spend our free time becomes more and more predictable. Indeed, Roald Dahl predicted this trend decades ago. “Please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away,” he wrote, “and in its place, you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.”
