Reading
Reading
While a few of the students dismissed reading as “just a waste of time,”1 the most common reason for not reading for fun across all students was a lack of time, largely due to the demands of their academic work. Two high school students noticed that the older they get, the less they read for fun; they pointed to the impact of academic and extracurricular demands on student time. Some students also pointed to difficulty finding something that could hold their attention and focus, with one student observing, “Whenever I start reading, I always find it so difficult because I always skip ahead a few words and I go back.”2 Another student offered, “I feel like I’m not really good at paying attention, like getting down what I’m reading.”3
Though some students noted a lack of interest in reading in general, others expressed regret that they were not able to read more. One high school student said, “I don’t really read for fun, but not because I don’t want to. It’s just because I literally don’t have time. I come from school. I do my homework. I do sports and then sleep.”4 Some pointed to their phones as distractions: “I don’t read as much either but the books I do have, I will revisit . . . if I feel like I’ve been on my phone too much.”5
This feeling appears to persist into college. When asked whether they read for fun, one college student said, “When school is in session, rarely. Like, and it’s unfortunate, I wish it were more. It’s just a lot of reading for the classes already, so . . . the time I would be able to freely read, I kind of want to go on my phone.”6 Another student pointed to a wider set of reasons for their declining reading habits: “I feel like my attention span has shortened even more especially ever since COVID and the lockdown, with TikTok and just being on your phone all the time.”7 Other reasons for not reading for fun expressed by both high school and college students included the inability to find enjoyable books and books becoming more challenging as their associated reading level increased.
Students who did read for fun—and even some who read rarely—readily identified a wide variety of genres that interested them, with the most common ranging from romance and science fiction to manga and “nonfiction.” When deciding what to read, some students did not cite anyone specific as an influence and instead followed their own interests, while others mentioned friends and family. A substantial number of high school and college students mentioned social media as an influence, with college students calling out TikTok specifically—and not just for book recommendations but also for sparking their interest in reading. One college student described their experience with TikTok as “the thing that got me to read in the first place.”8 Others pointed to films or television shows that prompted them to pick up a related book (and, in one case, the script for the original play on which a film was based).
Even as some students used digital media for discovery, most of the high school and college student readers reported preferring physical books over e-books, citing a greater connection afforded by the physical format and the potential for distraction associated with electronic formats. As one student noted, “I feel like finishing a paper book is way more satisfying than finishing a book online.” Some of the high school students noted that they preferred to listen to audiobooks because the narrator can “read it more fluently and better.”9 But even among those who liked audiobooks, almost all of them indicated they wanted to have a physical copy to engage with alongside the audio.