According to US federal data analysed by Sunil Iyengar of the National Endowment for the Arts, reading for pleasure is in steep decline across every age group in the United States. Most dramatically, the drop is concentrated among young adults, a generation being raised on infinite scroll and ambient distraction. This is not a gentle tapering, but... See more

Throughout the 1990s, the share of teenagers who read daily outnumbered the share who read “hardly ever”, according to long-term reading surveys. But in the last 25 years, this has flipped so dramatically that today roughly half of teens say they hardly ever read for fun. The teen who reads daily is on track to become an endangered species.

But for younger generations—especially those who grew up with mobile—there’s a fuzzier line between content creator and content consumer. On YouTube, about 1 in 1,000 users produced content, a huge improvement from TV; on TikTok, it’s accelerated to more like 1 in 4. For younger people, user-generated content platforms are more natural: the user... See more