Young read more books than older generation, research finds

They are the generation growing up with digital technology at their fingertips, but new research from America has found that despite the wealth of gadgets on offer to them, US millennials are more likely to have read a book in the last year than older adults.

Pew Research’s survey of more than 6,000 Americans of 16 and over found that 88% of Americans under 30 read a book in the past year, compared with 79% of those age 30 and older. Adults of 65 and over were the age group least likely to have read a book in the past year, said Pew.

The typical number of titles read in the past year by younger Americans who read at least one book was 10, with 43% of millennials saying they read on a daily basis, compared to 40% of older adults.

“The image of millennials as keen readers always seems to cause surprise,” said Samantha Shannon, the 22-year-old author who won a six-figure deal for her bestselling adult/crossover fantasy series, which kicked off last year with The Bone Season. “After all, we’ve grown up in a world that bombards us with technological distractions. It’s true that we consume narrative in different ways, but we’re no less engaged with stories than previous generations.”

The report also found that “despite their embrace of technology”, 62% of US millennials said there was “a lot of useful, important information that is not available on the internet”. Fifty-three per cent of older Americans agreed with the same statement.

The percentage of Americans over 16 who read at least one book a year also seems to be increasing over recent years. The latest figures suggest that 82% of Americans over 16 fall into this category, an increase over the 76% of Americans over 18 reported to be reading at least one book a year in 2013 and figures of 75% and 78% reported for Americans over 16 in 2012 and 2011 respectively.

The news comes as statistics from Nielsen BookScan, compiled by the Bookseller, show that the children’s books market in the UK is set for record growth this year. Readers spent £187.9m on printed children’s books in the first eight months of 2014, up 10% on 2013 and a growth which already makes children’s books the fastest-growing sector in books this year. And “if the market stays more than 10% ahead of last year’s figures, it is projected to be worth £337m in 2014 – the best year the children’s sector will have had since BookScan records began in 1998,” says the Bookseller.

“Digital isn’t taking over the kids’ book market in the same way as it is the adults, for obvious reasons. A lot of parents don’t want their children spending all their time on devices. And teenagers actually prefer print books – it’s a status symbol to have the latest book by Patrick Ness or Holly Smale. And they think the cost of ebooks is too high – possibly wrongly, but they think they should be cheaper, or free, and when it comes to a Kindle. I don’t know any teenager with a Kindle. If they want to buy a new device, they want to buy a mobile phone or a tablet,” said the magazine’s children’s editor Charlotte Eyre.

“You just have to look at the popularity of YALC [the first UK Young Adult Literature Convention] this year to see how keen teenagers were to get hold of the latest print YA book and get them signed by the authors. You can’t do that with an ebook.  I’m not saying teenagers don’t read anything digitally, of course they do, but I think they read posts on social media, newspaper or magazine articles, or stories on Wattpad, more than books.”

There has also been a wealth of good books for younger readers selling strongly in the first part of the year, said Eyre, citing new works from Julia Donaldson and Oliver Jeffers in the picture-book range, novels from Jeff Kinney and David Walliams in children’s fiction, and from Smale and Ness in young adult writing.

Titles relating to Minecraft, meanwhile, are also “a massive cause of growth”, said Eyre, “but if you take it out [the] market is still bigger than last year (up by more than 5%) which is good news”.

Peter Donaldson, managing director of Colchester bookshop Red Lion Books, said he had “also seen children’s books buck the trend”. “I think the main reason is that children’s books are not so attractive in ebook format, particularly picture books of course. We see, every day, so many mums with young children coming in (and these days it’s often grandparents looking after grandchildren). Exploring the children’s department is a fantastic experience that children love. Their enthusiasm for books seems to be stronger than ever,” said Donaldson, also citing, like Eyre, “a great range of books – interesting and innovative characters and plots”, and “brilliantly talented artists working on illustrated books”.

The Pew report, Younger Americans and Public Libraries, found that a majority (52%) of the younger Americans who read at least one book in the past year said they purchased, rather than borrowed, their books, with 39% saying they borrowed most of their books. The survey also found that younger Americans had used a library in the past 12 months at slightly higher rates (50%) than older Americans (47%) – but that they were less bothered by the possibility of libraries closing down. Around 19% of those under 30 told Pew that their library’s closure would have a “major impact on them and their family”, compared with 32% of older adults.

“If millennials are beginning to value libraries less, as the Pew Research report suggests, which is saddening: it’s not because we’re not reading, but because there are so many other ways to read and respond to books,” said Shannon.

“It’s vital that libraries aren’t written off as irrelevant, and continue to receive the means to broaden and advertise their services to a generation that can read at the click of a button.”