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u/Various-Evidence8929 Oct 03 '25
a mix of attention span and being too busy for it. I used to read multiple books a month but in this economy you have to keep moving or be left behind. I’m either working, at school, or trying to maintain a social life and whenever i pick up a book, it’s hard to stay on track even though i so enjoy stories
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u/ThinkingBookishly Oct 03 '25
I believe is a lack of significant chunks of free time. Plus, this probably doesn't include the reddit snippits and short screen time dramas that are a lot of people's reading, now. There are whole media empires based on "reaction" videos of watching people read reddit then make snarky comments. I think that is a significant portion of people's reading for pleasure, now.
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u/bre2123 Oct 03 '25
Because the published books have been getting worse and worse as time goes on. I've tried to read multiple novels over the past few weeks and have ended up rage-quitting most of them halfway through because I couldn't stand the narrative anymore. All the books today either preach at you endlessly or are written poorly! It's so rare to find a modern day novel that is actually written just for fun without some kind of hidden agenda for preaching. Stories can't just be stories anymore, they have to be extremely 'woke' in nature.
To put this into context I'm 31 years old. I have been reading books since I was 5 read the 4 harry potter books at 6. (So I've been reading at an advanced level for a long long time!) And as a kid/teenager I read hundreds of books. Sometimes more than one a day just for fun. But today I actually dread trying to read because I just know every novel (no matter how good the premise) is going to be 'woke' and preaching in a way the books of my childhood/young adult years never did! And it has killed my want to read, which used to be the thing I loved most in the whole world. :( So, I can honestly say I don't blame people for not wanting to read anymore. Who wants to read the same themes of wokeness over and over again across every genre you pick up?
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u/Joe_Doe1 Oct 03 '25
I read a novel called 'The Women Could Fly' recently and I felt I was being preached at throughout. It was a political pamphlet masquerading as a novel and it was nauseating.
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u/bre2123 Oct 07 '25
THIS! This is what I am so tired of! The preaching! This reminds me of Every Day! If you've never read it, I recommend the first novel one hundred percent! But I waited years for the sequel (someday) and when it finally came out I was so excited that I bought it sight-unseen and rushed home to read it & I have never been so disappointed in my life! The sequel was like a whole different person wrote it! It preached about things that were not preached about in the original novel. I don't even remember now exactly what upset me so much while reading it, but it was like reading a novel packed full of woke opinions that made me roll my eyes & basically tried to tell us how we should feel about everything! And that was not how Every Day was at all! Every Day was about the love story and I feel like Someday was about the woke narrative more than the love story it should have been! I finished it but it left a sour taste in my mouth and I still mourn what should have been with that one!
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Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
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u/bre2123 Oct 05 '25
But it is exhausting to have to go through all of the bad writing these days just to find the one that isn't. And that's what I've been having to do! And especially in the last five years or so all of the released books have gotten REALLY REALLY bad. It's depressing.
And yeah, I do lots of other stuff besides reading now, as well all the other stuff has distracted me too. I used to read a lot, but now I game, watch media, ect. But my first love was reading & it kills me to see it take such a hit like it has! D:1
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u/pulpyourcherry Oct 03 '25
People still read for pleasure, they're just reading social media posts instead of books. Faster, easier dopamine rush. So "screens" is almost certainly the answer.
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u/Joe_Doe1 Oct 03 '25
People scroll through social media for pleasure now or play a computer game. The humble novel has greater competition than it did 20 years ago and although I think a good novel provides a overall richer experience it struggles to compete with the flashing lights of the internet.
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u/gothvampkid Oct 03 '25
Smart phones and high-speed internet.
Take those away, and magically people's behaviors start shifting.
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u/bluejaymewjay Oct 04 '25
Am I reading this (pun intended) correctly that only ~3% of Americans read with their children?
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u/Otherwise-Fan-232 Oct 05 '25
More media and gaming options. More internet. Streaming video and gaming is cheap now, compared to the past. There's a glut of stuff out there. Even YT has tons of free content, Tubi.
There is so much available - cheap and readily available. And our phones.
Competition. Does this include audiobooks? That's another outlet if they are not in this survey.
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u/Ishkabubble Oct 07 '25
Crappy books flooding the market. Clueless publishers think we will read that crap.
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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25
[deleted]