In his current New Yorker essay, David Denby mourns the age of innocence, worrying that while adolescents today may find happiness with their smartphones, they will likely never experience the joy of reading a really good, or even great, book. But who actually is reading and for how long?
A time use survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that young people do read fewer minutes per weekend day than people over-75, writes Katy Waldman, but a 2014 Gallup poll, tells a different story: “80 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 29) have read a book in the past 12 months, compared with 69 percent of those 65 and older, like Denby.”
