Reading is in decline in the United States and at Haldane. I read a lot less than I used to. Even four years ago, I would read for hours every day. Now, I’m lucky if I average four a week. I’m not alone. The University of Florida and University College London found in a 2025 study that reading for pleasure has fallen by 40% in the last 20 years. This decline is a warning for the future of the liberal arts, and reversing it requires personal and sustained effort.

Among young people, the decline is especially stark. According to the National Literacy Trust, in 2005, total reading enjoyment was 36% higher, and total daily reading was 20 percentage points greater than it is today.

At the same time, smartphone ownership has increased in recent years. 70% of 11-year-olds have their own smartphone, according to a 2025 survey from the University of Southern Florida, up 17% from a similar 2022 study by Common Sense Media . W hile of course causation is impossible to prove, the percentage of students who enjoyed reading and who read daily fell rapidly at around the same time phone ownership increased.

This aligns with my own personal experience. I got a phone, one that could use a search engine and access the internet, when I entered ninth grade. The effect was immediate. I read less. A lot less. Social media, news, and a myriad of other online distractions siphoned away the time I had spent reading and pushed me towards things that required lower attention spans. Part of the decline of my reading time was likely due to the increase in responsibilities and demands on my time as I entered high school. I had less free time overall. But more work doesn’t account for the fact that I find it harder to read long-form works than I used to.

I’ve felt the effects of my lowered time spent on deeper reading. I find it much harder to focus on long-form writing and work than I did only a few years ago. While typing the paragraph above, barely more than 100 words in length, I checked my phone twice.

There is research that backs up the claim that we are training our brains on a short-attention-span diet. According to a 2024 study in Front Hum Neurosci, “mobile phone short video use negatively impacts attention functions.”

Reading scores in the United States have slipped at the same time reading has declined, and phone access has increased . Th ey ’ve dropped roughly 0.6 grade levels in 2025 compared to 2015, according to the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.

One thing Haldane does well, and something many schools get wrong, is that they require students to read full books. Not excerpts. Not the page and a half, along with 10 multiple-choice questions that standardized tests have incentivized. According to the New York Times, in 2009, English teachers assigned an average of four books annually. In 2024, the average had slipped to 2.7.

In ELA class, I’ve read around four to five full assigned books every year since middle school. My classmates and I have read Shakespeare, Orwell, and Tolkien. We have been exposed to a wide and deep variety of books, and I believe it plays a part in sustaining reading levels and habits at Haldane.

The state-wide phone ban, too, is a step in the right direction for supporting reading. Less time on phones in school means more time that could be used to read, although it remains to be seen how much of that extra time we will fill with deeper reading. Teachers also try to increase reading for pleasure by mandating reading logs in 10th and 11th grade, updated weekly, and accompanied by 20 minutes of independent, in-class reading each week.

These measures seek to create good habits in students, but they are not enough, and can often be ineffective. The phone ban hasn’t affected my phone usage outside of school, and for me, reading logs are more of an annoyance than an effective tool to enforce reading for pleasure.

It is almost impossible to create good habits through force alone. Students have to want to read. A reading log cannot force you to enjoy reading, and a phone ban can’t do anything to stop phone usage outside of school. The fix for sagging reading numbers won’t come from the schools. It has to come from us. We have to choose to read.

A solution that has helped me is setting aside 20 minutes every night to read. After I’ve completed my calculus homework and brushed my teeth, I leave my phone downstairs to charge, and I read in bed. The important thing for me is the absence of my phone from my room. Removing one distraction makes my brain crave another. I can replace my phone with a book, just for a few minutes. Sometimes, a few minutes can be a few hours, and I’ll find myself reading deep into the night.

My strategies are far from perfect, but the next time I find myself doom-scrolling to procrastinate on my calculus homework, I hope to procrastinate by reading a book instead. I invite you to do it too. Read something that you enjoy, whether that be Anton Chekov or Rick Riordan. It might just save your English grade.

To provide feedback, express a concern, ask a question, or submit a letter to the editor, email: [email protected].