In this weeks’ Time Machine, has America’s love for reading books declined or are we bigger bibliophiles than ever?
Let’s hop in our time machine and head back to 1937 when Gallup asked Americans if they were reading a book at the time. 31% said yes and 67% said they were not.
Over three decades later in 1972, General Electric asked Americans again if they were currently reading a book. This time 36% said they were and 62% said they were not. Not much change over 35 years.
So, let’s jump back to now, or pretty close to it.
In 2021, Pew Research asked a similar question and 74% of Americans said they had read at least one book in the past year. It’s not the same as “are you currently reading a book” but it’s still a big difference from what we saw in the older surveys.
But, there’s another question that’s been asked over time. How many books are we reading?
Gallup asked Americans who had read a book in 1978 how many books they had read all or part of the way through in the past year. The most common answer was “1 to 5” books (29%) and the least common was “none” at 8%. Then, there were the real book lovers: A surprising 13% said they’d read more than 50 books in the prior year!
In 2021, Gallup asked Americans the same question and this time the most common response was “1 to 5” and this time 40% choose this answer — a fairly sizable jump! Then again, the hard-core readers (over 50 books in a year) dropped to 6%.
So perhaps more people are reading, but they’re reading fewer books?
Also, we haven’t mentioned that “reading” a book means something different now than it did 20 years ago. How do e-books and audio books play into America’s reading habits?
Amazon’s e-book reader — the Kindle — was introduced in 2007. This thin tablet could be loaded up with hundreds of books that could be taken anywhere. Has this route to reading increased our book consumption?
In 2019, SSRS asked Americans if they read books on Kindles and the like. A little less than a third — 31% — said they did and 69% said they did not.
And what about audio books? WordsRated reports the number of Americans who say they’d listened to an audio book over the last year jumped from 11% in 2011 to 45% in 2023.
Does this mean e-books and audio books have made “readers” out of formally non-readers? We couldn’t find any survey data that shows that but…it might be an interesting question for a future poll!
This post was written by Marist Poll Media Team member Athen Hollis.