The Decline of Reading and the Rise of a Postliterate America
The Atlantic's August 2026 cover story argues that American society is becoming postliterate, with reading rates plummeting across all demographics. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of adults read a book in 2022, and only 38% read fiction. The American Time Use Survey shows the proportion of Americans reading for pleasure on any given day fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. Gambling surpassed reading as a leisure activity, with 57% of Americans placing a bet in 2025. Reading skills are declining: 35% of high-school seniors are proficient in analyzing complex texts, while nearly 30% of adults cannot paraphrase a multipage text. The article traces the historical arc from the Library of Alexandria to the present, citing cognitive scientists who warn that replacing reading with short-form video atrophies attention spans and critical thinking. It notes that Donald Trump is described as America's first postliterate president, and that AI tools like ChatGPT threaten to further erode writing and reasoning skills. The piece concludes that reading is becoming a niche activity, with 20% of adults accounting for over 80% of books read.
Key facts
- Fewer than half of American adults reported reading a book in 2022 (NEA).
- Only 38% of adults read a novel or short story in 2022.
- Proportion of Americans reading for pleasure fell from 28% (2004) to 16% (2023).
- 57% of Americans placed a bet in 2025, surpassing book reading as a leisure activity.
- 35% of high-school seniors were proficient at analyzing complex fictional themes in 2024.
- Nearly 30% of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text.
- Average attention span on screens dropped from 2.5 minutes (2004) to 47 seconds (2020).
- 20% of adults accounted for more than 80% of all books read in 2025.
Entities
Artists
- Boris Pasternak
- Charles Dickens
- John Cheever
- James Baldwin
- Anthony Burgess
- Eratosthenes
- Zenodotus
- Euclid
- Homer
- Aristotle
- Plato
- Socrates
- Alexander the Great
- Julius Caesar
- Benjamin Franklin
- John Adams
- Thomas Jefferson
- George Orwell
- Marshall McLuhan
- Neil Postman
- Walter J. Ong
- Alexander Luria
- Roger Bagnall
- Maryanne Wolf
- Dan Willingham
- John Hutton
- Gloria Mark
- Benjamin Powers
- Jonathan Fine
- Elizabeth Dworak
- Cal Newport
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Jonathan Haidt
- Leah Price
- Martin Puchner
- John McWhorter
- Roderick Hart
- Joshua Meyrowitz
- Reihan Salam
- David Plouffe
- Donald Trump
- Joe Biden
- Ronald Reagan
- Barack Obama
- Dua Lipa
- Reese Witherspoon
- Joe Rogan
- MrBeast
- IShowSpeed
- TheBurntPeanut
- Samuel D. Lougheed
- Arthur Reed Kimball
- Andrey Mir
- Felton Thomas Jr.
- Rex Ovalle
- Amanda Kordeliski
- Margaret Rennix
- Annemarie Cortez
- Lupita Villalobos
- Brian Bannon
- Robert Townsend
- Mark J. Lodato
Institutions
- The Atlantic
- National Endowment for the Arts
- American Time Use Survey
- Publishers Weekly
- New York Public Library
- American Association of School Librarians
- UCLA
- University of Virginia
- UT Southwestern Medical Center
- UC Irvine
- Yale
- University of Connecticut
- Haskins Global Literacy Hub
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Harvard University
- Brown University
- Northwestern University
- Georgetown University
- NYU
- Rutgers University
- Columbia University
- University of Texas at Austin
- Manhattan Institute
- NBC News
- New York Times
- Morning Consult
- Syracuse University
- Newhouse School of Public Communications
- Cleveland Public Library
- National Council of Teachers of English
- Barnes & Noble
- Substack
- Spotify
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Netflix
- Amazon
- Google Books
- Internet Archive
- Library of Alexandria
- Mouseion
- Lyceum
- Pérez Art Museum Miami
Locations
- Alexandria
- Egypt
- Mesopotamia
- Uzbekistan
- Kirghizia
- Novaya Zemlya
- Far North
- London
- United Kingdom
- Holborn Hill
- Lincoln's Inn Hall
- New York City
- United States
- Ossining
- Corona
- California
- Duncanville
- Texas
- Dallas
- Chicago
- Illinois
- Oklahoma
- Kansas
- Brazil
- Britain
- Amazon
- Syracuse