Marked decline in children's reading for pleasure highlighted in 2024 report

An annual report into children's reading habits shows a continued decline in children reading for pleasure, with just 25% of children and teenagers choosing to read four or more times a week.

The report highlights a 'perfect storm' of converging trends impacting on children's reading, including fewer children being read to at home and at school; screen time increasingly filling free time; and reading being seen as 'literacy' rather than something enjoyable that children would choose to do in their free time.

The findings correlate with a National Literacy Trust survey in 2024, which found the lowest enjoyment in reading among 8–18-year-olds (34.6%) since the survey began in 2005. Some 72% of children age 5-17 'would rather watch TV, play video games or go online than read books'.

The latest annual survey into children's reading habits was undertaken by Harpercollins Childrens Books and Farshore, includes data from Nielsen's Understanding the Children's Book Consumer 2024 report, which follows reading trends through book sales.

Cally Poplack, managing director of HarperCollins Children's Books and Farshore, believes we are now facing a 'crisis' in reading for pleasure. "Fewer than 25% of children read for pleasure frequently. This means three quarters of children are missing out on a hugely beneficial and enjoyable part of life."

'Perfect storm' impacts children's reading

This year's research, 'Children's Reading: How do we move from endurance to enjoyment?', notes a strong correlation between children not being read to both at school and at home, and a decline in the pleasure children get from reading.  

While the decline in reading for pleasure has been seen across all ages, the biggest fall is among eight to 10-year-olds, the age at which children have learned to read and are now developing confidence as readers and building a 'reading for pleasure' habit for the rest of their lives. Just 31% of eight to 10-year-olds are now reading four or more days a week for pleasure. This compares with more than half (56%) of children In 2012. This is reflected in a 25% fall in fiction sales for children aged nine years plus since 2019. 

Among children aged five to seven years, those who read for pleasure at least four days a week has fallen from 54% in 2012 to 34% in 2024, and among 11-13-year-olds from 34% to 19% in the same period. Teenagers aged 14 to 17 years - already the least engaged readers - also read less, down from 16% in 2012 to 12% in 2024.

When looking just at boys, the picture is even more stark: for example, among 14–17-year-olds, only 9% of boys read for pleasure four or more days a week, compared with 15% of girls, and these boys remain the most disengaged with 36% 'rarely or never' reading, compared with 16% of girls.

What's causing the decline in reading for pleasure?

The report notes a strong correlation between the decline in children's reading for pleasure and a decline in how much children are read to. "Having negative ideas about reading at school, being tested and being expected to read, in combination with not being read to very much at home means, not surprisingly, that for many children reading is not thought of as enjoyable and is not something they would choose to do in their free time."

The shift away from books to other forms of entertainment is marked in young children's lives. Fewer than half (41%) of naught to four-year-olds are read to frequently. This has declined from 50% in 2019 and 64% in 2012, with naught to two-year-olds read to the least. There is also a difference in how boys and girls experience books and reading; more than one in five boys aged naught to two are 'rarely/never' read to. Only 29% of 0–2-year-old boys are read to 'every day/nearly every day', compared to 44% of girls of the same age.

The report also notes that Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012), the youngest of parents and those who grew up with technology themselves, are the most likely to consider reading as 'more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do'. They may be more likely to think reading is the school's job, and this may be a reason for the decline in reading to pre-schoolers, or that fun comes more from digital entertainment than from books. Adults are reading less themselves, and this may be linked to the decline in parents reading to children.

Reading is associated with literacy, not enjoyment 

By the time they start school, many young children have not been read and would not associate reading books with fun or enjoyment. The report notes, 'For most pre-schoolers, reading and books do not play a significant part in their life until they start school and are taught to read. For those who have not been read to at all, their first introduction to reading is as a subject, a skill they must learn, rather than something to be enjoyed'. Indeed Kindred Squared's 2024 school readiness survey found 44% of parents think children do not need to know how to use books before they start school.

Despite the focus on reading for pleasure in the Department for Education's 2023 'Reading Framework', there has been an increase in the proportion of children aged 5-13 who think reading is more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do since 2022. In 2012 this stood at 25% and in 2024 was 29%. The increase has been greatest among 5–7-year-olds, up from 18% in 2022 to 24% in 2024 .

Daily storytime in schools can grow reading enjoyment

Earlier research by Farshore (Storytime in School) has shown that daily storytime in school can help to offset the decline in reading at home and the impact of screens on children's enjoyment of reading. 'Children are told reading is great, is fun, is interesting, is good for them, but this means nothing if they do not experience any enjoyment.'

The report points to three action points to help children enjoy reading: 
- having a wide choice of reading materials with access to a broad range of books, and well-stocked school libraries
- giving children free choice of reading materials
- regular and frequent storytime, where children are read to for enjoyment.

Daily storytime in class is declining

Despite the evidence that it works, Farshore's research over the last three years suggests the proportion of 5–10-year-olds who experience a daily story at school is actually decreasing. With only 36% of 5–7-year-olds and 22% of 8–10-year-olds being read to at home for four or more days a week, for some children, listening to a story at school might be the only time they are read to. Yet  42% of parents said their child was only sometimes read to or never had storytime at school, where they are read to just for fun; just 24% were read to daily, down from 31% two years ago in 2022. 

'A low cost, high impact solution'

As children's engagement with reading continues to decline, together with parents' reading aloud to children, research has shown that daily storytime in school is 'a proven effective strategy to encourage children to read independently'. The report describes daily storytime as 'a low cost, high impact solution which would have far-reaching impact if implemented in every primary school, every day'. 

HarperCollins is lobbying government in support of story time in schools and continues to support the National Literacy Trust's Libraries for Primaries campaign.