The article's got some fascinating numbers.
Quote:
The share of Americans who said they read more than 10 books over the course of the previous 12 months dropped from about a third of Americans (34 percent) in 2016 to just more than a quarter (27 percent) in 2021.
The average American consumed 12.6 books last year, down from 15.6 in 2016 and 14.2 in 2005. At peak consumption, in 1999, the average American reported getting through 18.5 books.
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1. Only 27% read more than 10 books in the past year.
2. Average books-per-person is 12.6, so... less than 1/4 of the people are reading the "average" number.
Note that the survey question (
source) is "During the past year, about how many books did you read, either all or part of the way through?"
So it's not even, "average reading rate is 12.6 books/year." It's "average reading rate involves
starting 12.6 books/year."
(Meanwhile, ParanormalRomances Georg is out there zipping through 4 Kindle Unlimited books/day and throwing off the averages.)
Statistics about "how many books did you partially read in the last year" are not particularly useful anymore; they don't tell us anything about the state of literature in the US.
In the 90s, people who didn't read books sometimes read magazines or newspapers, but mostly got their entertainment & education from tv, movies, or radio. Today... a person can "not read books" but still spend a substantial amount of time reading both fiction and nonfiction.
OTOH, we have a growing number who don't read much of anything, because they don't have to, and because schools have no idea how to teach "books are one type of information & entertainment media among many; here's how to get the most out of them" instead of "you should read books to learn and also for fun."