“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.”
— Walt Disney
The decline in a collective appetite for reading, especially in the United States, is not a new phenomenon.
As per the New Yorker’s Caleb Crain, the U.S. Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey revealed that between 2003 and 2016, the time that the average American devoted to daily reading for personal interest sank from 0.36 hours to 0.29 hours.
This decrease comes in spite of the fact that the average American spent 1.48 hours absorbing a text each time they read, up from 1.39 in 2003. Overall, only 19.5% of the U.S. population was reading at all in 2016, a startling drop from 2003’s figure of 26.3%.
The consequences of someone’s allergy to reading, whether they’re in school or the workforce, are all too apparent if you look close enough.
From economic earning power (or lack thereof) to its direct link to mass incarceration numbers, a person’s reading level can be an accurate predictor of success or failure down the line. Yes, learning disorders like dyslexia and other limitations are impactful variables, but they don’t account for an entire nation’s unwillingness to open a book regularly.
