The reading of books is changing. I’ve heard lots of remarks from people older than me that people used to read more books. I want to ignore these claims, or throw them into the bin with all of the other remarks wishing for some better past (like that one political slogan I’m not going to write). However, according to the statistics, these claims are correct.

Over the last several decades, the number of Americans that report having not read a book in the last year has steadily increased. 

The percentage of adults who had not read a book in the last year increased from 8% in 1978, to 18% in 2002, to 23% in 2014. More recently, in 2011, 79% of U.S. adults said they had read a book in the last year, but in 2016, only 73% said so. 

Presumably, this change is largely the result of technology, which gives us other ways to spend our time besides reading: social media, video games, internet browsing, and so forth. 

Unsurprisingly, technology has not only changed how many books we read, but how we read those books. In a 2016 PEW study, 65% of U.S. adults reported having read a traditional print book in the last year, while 28% reported having read an ebook, and 14% reported having listened to an audio book. 

To get a better idea of who’s doing this reading, we can look at 2017 numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Simply put, older Americans read more than younger Americans, and Americans with higher levels of formal education read more than those with less. (It’s important to keep in mind that more reading doesn’t necessarily lead to more formal education—it’s also possible that more formal education leads to more free time for reading, or that those who like to read in the first place simply tend toward college and beyond).

Globally, the United States finds itself somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to book reading. In the 2013 World Culture Score Index, which surveyed thirty countries around the world, the US ranked 23rd for time spent reading books per week, at 3 hours and 6 minutes. Other countries surveyed included Russia at about 7 hours, China at 8 hours, and India, which topped the list at 10 hours and 42 minutes. 

Thus, it’s clear that book reading is changing, and there’s no reason to believe it’s going to stop. The ways in which we read will likely keep shifting into more digital formats, and the people who read will shift to whoever seeks out the most books—which may change significantly as more countries develop their education systems and raise their literacy rates. I believe books can change lives, so I will keep my eye on just whose lives, exactly, they’re going to change.