Survey Finds More Americans Bet Than Read a Book in 2025

A survey of 236,000 Americans found that 57 percent placed a bet either online or in person in 2025, while fewer than half read a single book during the same period. The proportion of adults who read for pleasure on any given day dropped from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023, according to the American Time Use Survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts.

That figure included books, magazines, newspapers, audiobooks, and e-books.

The decline in reading occurred across all age groups, genders, and education levels. Even retirees, women, and college graduates showed reduced engagement with books. Only 38 percent of adults reported reading a novel or short story in 2022. The study also noted that best-selling novels have shorter sentences than those published a century ago.

In 2024, 35 percent of high-school seniors scored proficient at analyzing complex fictional themes or evaluating an author's argument. Roughly the same share scored below basic on the same assessment. Almost 30 percent of American adults could not paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text, up from less than 20 percent in 2017.

The percentage of 13-year-olds who said they rarely or never read for fun rose from 8 percent in 1984 to 29 percent in 2025.

Only 2 percent of adults read to a child on any given day.