Rediscover the joy of reading for fun
Research shows that children are spending less time reading books for pleasure, which has disturbing implications for learning. Credit: Getty Images/Michael Loccisano
When was the last time you read a book — for fun?
When was the last time your child or grandchild did?
In a world dominated by screens of all sizes, reading for pleasure — particularly a traditional book — is a dying pastime.
With everything going on in the world and our own lives, it might seem like there's not much time left to sit in a favorite chair and open a book, whether a new find or an old friend.
That's unfortunately true for children, too.
And that's more than the loss of a hobby. It has potentially severe consequences, especially for children.
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, less than half of U.S. adults read a book that wasn't for school or work in 2022, the last year for which data is available. Just 38% of adults read a novel or short story. Both statistics marked steady declines from a decade earlier.
The data for children is even more disturbing. According to long-term trend survey results from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, just 14% of 13-year-olds said they read for fun almost every day in 2022, while another 22% said they read for fun at least once a week. By comparison, 31% of 13-year-olds said they "never or hardly ever" read for fun.
In 2004, those numbers were reversed. Then, 30% of 13-year-olds said they read for fun almost every day, 34% said they read for fun at least once a week, and only 13% indicated a "never or hardly ever" result. Nine-year-olds showed a similar decline, from 54% who read for fun almost every day in 2004, to 39% in 2022.
Regular pleasure reading for children is at its lowest level since the question was first asked in 1984.
Unsurprisingly, researchers see a clear correlation between those trends and students' declining reading and English Language Arts scores. Last year, more than half of Long Island's students in grades three through eight failed to reach proficiency on New York's ELA exam.
New national data from the NCES' National Assessment of Educational Progress, a study of fourth and eighth graders, provided more alarming evidence. Last month's release of "The Nation's Report Card" indicated that 33% of eighth graders read below NAEP's "basic" level, the largest percentage in the assessment's history, while 40% of fourth-graders fell below "basic," the largest percentage in two decades. Less than one-third of students in both grades are "proficient" or better.
Many factors are at work. Certainly, COVID-19-era disruptions to academic growth still reverberate. In an essay published in October, the NEA's Sunil Iyengar, who directs the organization's Office of Research & Analysis, rightly pointed to social media "addiction" as a "threat for early and evolving learners" in terms of brain development, mental health and even literary imagination.
But the decline in reading has additional ramifications for both adults and children, he said.
"In the end, questions about reading habits and methods are essential not only to the future of the literary arts, or to literacy alone," he wrote. "Such questions are about providing greater opportunities for cultural and civic participation, and social and economic mobility, for people from all backgrounds."
That's reason enough to open a book. But it's also worth remembering the simple joy of spending time each day engaging with some favorite characters or losing ourselves in a new world, and watching our children and grandchildren do the same.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
