Enjoying this headline? You're a rarity: Reading for pleasure is declining, study says

Researchers fear the reading decline reflects how many Americans have less and less leisure time.

“Reading for pleasure, among other forms of arts participation, is a health behavior,” said one author of the study.

Put down the book, pick up the phone.

So it goes in the United States, where daily reading for pleasure has plummeted more than 40% among adults over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of Florida and University College London.

From 2003 to 2023, daily leisure reading declined at a steady rate of about 3% per year, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal iScience .

“This decline is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends in reading for pleasure from the 1940s through to the start of our study in 2003, suggesting