Under half read one book a year, with Americans more likely to place a bet, survey finds

The writing’s on the wall.Fewer than half of all American adults read a single book in the space of the year, with gambling becoming a more common leisure activity than reading, according to a bombshell new survey.The proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023, according to the American Time Use Survey carried out by the National Endowment for the Arts.That figure included people who had read a book, a magazine, a newspaper, or listened to an audiobook or read an e-book.Only 38% reported reading a novel or short story in 2022, the most recent year for which the data goes up to, the survey said.And while the odds of finding a reader among the American public are low, you would have a much better chance of finding a gambler.In 2025, more than half (57%) of Americans placed a bet either online or in person, according to the survey.The decline in reading cut across all age groups, genders, and education levels, with even the groups traditionally most inclined to love the written word—retirees, women, and college graduates—turning away from books.The study, which surveyed 236,000 Americans’ leisure habits, also found that the books people read have changed.In 1958, the best-selling novel of the year was an English translation of Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago,” reported the Atlantic.Last year, that honor went to “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the latest in the young-adult series the Hunger Games.Other titles in the New York Times best seller list included the children’s books “Partypooper,” the 20th installment in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series, as well as “Dog Man: Big Jim Believes.”New York Times best sellers now have sentences around one-third shorter than they were a century ago, pointing to the average reader’s shorter attention span.The national literacy crisis also appears in America’s schools, where, in 2024, just 35% of high-school seniors were found to be “proficient” a...