Posted on July 2, 2018 at 2:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Feel like fewer people are reading these days? Sadly, the statistics prove you right.
The latest American Time Use Survey reported sharp decreases in the number of people reading for leisure each day as well as how much they read in 2017.
About 19 percent of Americans age fifteen and older read for pleasure on a given day last year, compared with roughly 28 percent in 2004.
The aggregate amount of daily reading time was about seventeen minutes a day in 2017, compared with twenty-three minutes in 2004.
The Washington Post cites several other discouraging surveys that found similar drops and suggests where to place the blame. And it’s not computers, cellphones, or video games.
From 1955 to 1995, TV time exploded while weekly reading time declined. “Competition from television turned out to be the most evident cause of the decline in reading,” the authors of that study concluded.
So back to the 2017 American Time Use Survey: It found that the average American spent more than 2.75 hours watching TV per day ... or nearly ten times the amount of time they read.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed a nationally representative sample of about 26,000 individuals to reach its conclusions.
Categories: Today in Books