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Teen Reading Slumps to Worst This Century Due to Surge in Screen Time (usnews.com) 105

Posted by BeauHD from the digital-distraction dept.
Teen reading, math, and science scores have fallen to their lowest levels since international PISA testing began in 2000, with 15-year-olds now reading at roughly the level previously expected of students a year younger. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) linked weaker results to more screen time, less reading for pleasure, and digital distraction. It also found that students who regularly used AI chatbots for tasks like drafting essays and summarizing text scored about 20 points lower in science, roughly equivalent to a year of learning. Reuters reports: A 2012 reading high of 501 on PISA's index had declined to a score of 466 last year. The test is widely regarded as the world's leading gauge of educational performance and its results are closely scrutinized by governments and educators. "In reading, more screen time and less reading for pleasure have gone hand in hand with weaker results," OECD head Mathias Cormann told a press conference. "We're also seeing more hasty reading, students rushing through a text and giving a quick wrong answer."

Reading scores fell more sharply in students from better-off backgrounds, the study added. Hindered by falling reading standards, average teenage science and maths skills were also at their lowest this century. Science fell from a 2009 high of 506 on the index to 486, while maths was down from 502 to 469 in the same period. East Asia was the best-performing region. Chinese cities that participated in the test, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan had the best educational systems with Britain and Estonia the only countries outside the region that made it into the top 10 in reading, mathematics and science.

Teen Reading Slumps to Worst This Century Due to Surge in Screen Time More | Reply

Teen Reading Slumps to Worst This Century Due to Surge in Screen Time

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  • Maybe that's just wishful thinking though.

    • Re:Someday it will resurge like vinyl records. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @12:40PM (#66328614)

      The thing is, most kids have always have needed to be forced to learn to read. Some (few, probably mainly the independent thinkers at 10-15% of the population) realize it is a powerful tool and a very good entertainment media and go for it. The rest does the minimum they think they can get away with. For those that are a bit smarter that still results in reasonable skills, for others in the absolute minimum. And compare the role-models that are out there. On one side you have people like Stubb from Finland, who caries around a physical notebook and pen wherever he goes, on the other side you have functional illiterates like Trump. If kids see you can apparently get to the top wile being uneducated, for many the motivation to learn vanishes. And add that they can now outsource all thinking to LLMs, the low-motivation learners turn into no-motivation ones.

      But reading and books will not go away. Even 1/10 of the general population is far more than needed to sustain the industry. Yes, the always greedy big players may drop them, but books have survived for centuries on small-ish authors, printers and distributors. What we will see is a larger gap between educated and uneducated. The educated ones will not go away.

  • School Requirements (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @12:11PM (#66328542)
    My son went through high school having been assigned a total of three whole-book reading assignments. Most of his reading assignments were newspaper articles, short stories, or single chapters of books. When I went to high school, I was expected to read at least two books every summer, then several more per English class.

    It's a choice made by teachers. My younger daughter had one teacher had her class read four books throughout the year. It was middle school, so they were shorter young adult books, but she had read more than my son did throughout all of high school in one class.

    • I never really enjoyed reading long fiction. I read a lot, just not fiction.

      I was made to read fiction in school (a long time ago), and it always bored me to read stories that had nothing I wanted. I don't find it entertaining or even relaxing.

      I've read plenty of books, and in my younger years, used to read those thick IT tomes on Windows and Linux and ....

      https://img-cdn.hpb.com/normal... [hpb.com]

      • A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good. -- Samuel Johnson

        • But if s/he reads more as a task, will his/her inclination towards reading slowly become stronger and better defined, as training a skill?

      • Apparently there's a bit of variance in how well people can visualize things in their so-called "mind's eye". I'd assume the people who get the most enjoyment out of reading fiction are the ones where the story does play out like a movie in their head. I could never get into fiction either, because I'm one of those unlucky ones that just sees text on a page.

        • Details bore me. Describing a person's outfit in detail is filled with information I could not care any less about. Its not that I can't visualize, because I can and do.

          I do understand why people DO like that kind of stuff, it's just not me.

          • Details bore me. Describing a person's outfit in detail is filled with information I could not care any less about.

            Clearly you don't read any Brandon Sanderson books.

      • Yeah I was a pretty big non-fiction reader in school.

        Though my interest was Art, so I read a *lot* of Art history. I can still bore people to tears talking about the historical motivations of various obscure 1930s impresionist artists or whatever for hours on end.

        God knows why I found it so fascinating. I'm a terrible artist ( and barely a decent coder).

        I did work in the state art gallery for a while though. They where fascinated that a 19yo kid knew so much about the various touring art exhibitions. (Fun f

    • Re:School Requirements (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @12:34PM (#66328604)

      They should let kids choose their own books to read. If I hadn't discovered the sci-fi aisle at the library on my own, Of Mice and Men in 12th grade would have been the last book I ever read. Kids should learn that reading is fun when they're not doing it for a grade.

      • Hell, in that regard, comic books can be a stepping-stone to longer-form reading. World-building through visual imagery, chronologically sequential narration, whetting a taste for better-detailed, longer-form storytelling ... the comment pretty much writes itself.

        • Graphic novels are incredibly popular with kids today. Many are reading them instead of novels. We'll see more kids make the jump to regular books, but from what I've seen it's only a small percentage.

          But in Japan you have manga aimed at adults. Why are stories told only with words somehow superior to a drawing an dialog? As they say a picture is worth 1,000 words.

          • Stories told with words only are superior to manga because they expose you to several orders of magnitude more words, and in more contexts.
            The exposure to words is valuable in itself: reading is a skill that requires training.
            The additional contexts familiarize you with the use of words beyond dialog. A description of e.g. a landscape requires processing that a picture of a landscape doesn't.

      • Of Mice and Men is a great story - well worth reading even without being assigned to do so. Steinbeck's writing is incredible.

        • If it's not about Walt's dream to build Disneyland, I'm gonna be as disappointed as I was when I found out this book [darbykane.com] wasn't about velociraptors.

      • It happens - my 6th grade desk just happened to be right next to a wall of books with a couple of "Rick Brandt Electronic Adventure" and we were off to the moon and Tibet.

      • They should let kids choose their own books to read. If I hadn't discovered the sci-fi aisle at the library on my own, Of Mice and Men in 12th grade would have been the last book I ever read. Kids should learn that reading is fun when they're not doing it for a grade.

        It's been done. My grade school did "Accelerated Reader" [wikipedia.org]. You could pick any book at an appropriate reading level and would get points after taking a quiz confirming you had read and understood the work. Each student needed to get a certain number of points, the classroom that got the most points would get a pizza party, etc.

        • I don't think they do it anymore, but my school used to have the MS read-a-thon, you'd get people to sponsor you money per book you read, and there were prizes for most money earned, most books read, etc. I was constantly getting beat out of first place in numbers by this guy who'd read comic compilations ( Peanuts!) while I was reading the Hobbit. It felt unfair to me at the time, but I ended up finding a lot of authors and books I loved.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is not just the teachers. The whole thing is a feedback loop. When a teacher finds that they would have to fail 80% of a class on a book reading assignment, they will reduce or remove that assignment in the future. Hence the problem is larger.

      How to fix it? No idea. One approach would be that below a certain skill level, unless you are really mentally challenged, you do not leave school. Lear to read or never graduate. Another would be realistic feedback that includes both potential and actual skill and

      • This was already solved. Those people are branded as Deltas or Epsilons, and sent to perform menial labor requiring as little thought as possible.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You need to read the book again. If you read it. Methinks you may have just seen the movie and not gotten how things actually work. May be the fault of the movie, not yours, but in the book, things work differently.

          • Yes, I know, they're bred and conditioned that way. Irradiated to enjoy the toil. We're not there... yet.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Indeed. Let's hope this is something either impossible or hard and difficult enough that it is not worthwhile.

              That said, maybe we need more differentiated results from education with regards to individual potential. On the other hand, that always comes with the risk of some secretly or openly fascist government just using this to judge how compliant people are. "Troublemakers" then can be conveniently locked out of all but the worst jobs. The religiously deranged would love such an approach too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by _dj6_ ( 8250908 )
      Shocking. The research (and the LLM technology) shows that knowledge is actually necessary for sophisticated thought. We are failing this generation by pretending that we can teach kids how to think without them actually having any base of knowledge in their brains first. If you don't know anything you can't think about things. You simply don't have the ideas, examples, material to work with in order to come up with opinions and objections and nuances. Teachers giving students excerpts and summaries and si

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Teun ( 17872 )
        A good point.
        When one is not able to comprehend a text that person will not be able to build on it (and grow).

    • It's a choice made by teachers. My younger daughter had one teacher had her class read four books throughout the year.

      Teachers have a role, yes, but when 75%+ of the class just won't read anything, or they just get the AI summary? Then what? Still a useful learning activity, asking or requiring students to do something you know they won't do?

    • Re:School Requirements (Score:5, Informative)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @02:27PM (#66328904) Homepage Journal

      It's a choice made by teachers.

      It should be. But more and more these days, teachers get overruled by higher up, including school boards.

  • Digital distraction sounds more like a home/parenting problem,than a school problem.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      An example that I worry about:
      Even serious newspapers will these days use their websites no longer for stories to read but instead publish video's that suppose to tell the story.
      Personally I hate this as the video's carry less information and take a lot longer than reading the story.
      Luckily some news sites will only use the video as an extra on top of the written story but the trend is to more video's.

      Now this is what adults are facing but it points to a trend, the (anti) social media shows kids only v
    • That is what is known as a "false dichotomy."

  • British news is slightly different (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @12:25PM (#66328576) Homepage
    I'm British, and have been following this from the other side of the story. In the UK it's more fragmented - this year England is up, but Scotland and Wales are down [bbc.co.uk] and in some cases quite significantly. Wales seems to have taken a hell of a hit in reading for instance.

    It's better news in maths and science but we're still behind where we were five-seven years ago except for science. Definitely a mixed bag, though all improvements are welcome of course.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Was going to post the same story, because it seems to debunk the idea that this is due to phones or screens or social media. We have those things in England, and scores still improved. In fact, ours are now some of the best in the world for reading.

  • Parents need to instill a love of reading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @12:25PM (#66328586)

    Parents must be an active participant in teaching their children to read. This starts with reading to them and then teaching them how to read. Pre-school helps here as well, but if the parents themselves are not readers, then its pretty likely the child won't really become one either. My mom use to take me to the library at least once a month but probably twice as I think the borrowing of book was only two or three weeks at a time. Of course, if you were actively reading you could get through a book a week.

    I'm really glad I didn't have video games or cellphones before I learned to read. By the time I got my first nintendo, I was already fulling into reading. I even loved the RPG games because of all the reading.

    I don't envy parents in this society at all. They have so many unnecessary distractions being pitted against them by our society. Society may be moving forward technologically but I'm not sure that's the same as progress.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      I have three boys in uni.
      Read to them from babies and they were reading by preschool.
      Regular library trips.
      All three are regular novel readers now.
      So parenting is a big part. Diggers are good at Dig Dig Digging man I got so sick of some books haha
      Dr Zeus was a fav!

  • Teens definitely affected on a massive scale like the article said. But, admittedly, I'm being affected too. I find myself attracted to an endless feed of garbage videos, most of which deliberately got misinformation clickbait. Multiple times I realize that I've spent too much time on the most useless thing of using the phone, I stopped, then found myself at it again. HELP!!!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Monoman ( 8745 )

      Remove the apps.

      I have no games or social media (easy since I don't really have any accounts) on my phone. I use it to communicate with actual friends and family. I keep an eye on email and occasionally use the browser but I do not like mobile web so most times i just wait until I can use a desktop OS.

  • "Due to" is doing a lot of work there.

  • USA Today headline: "Teen Reading Slumps... Due to Surge in Screen Time" isn't part of the study, and isn't proven by the study.

    Grades are dropping, so if grades are an indication of reading ability then [age group divided] teen reading slumps. Sure. And the use of digital devices is on the rise -- they don't prove, but they say. It used to the boggieman was video games. Before that TV. Before that radio. Apparently EVERYTHING is the cause of people becoming stuipider.

    > East Asia was the best-perfo

  • A ridiculous oversimplified nonsense term. What if I am *reading* during my "screen time"? Does that count or do only dead-wood mediums count?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      The point is not just that kids can't read but especially that they have trouble grokking what they read.
      And for that understanding it makes no difference where they read something but practice is the key word.

    • It's a sensationalized way of making it seem like all technology use is bad, when it's really just brainrot short format videos.

  • So why would they be at all inclined to read some archaic story just because it's considered literature? It might be better writing by some standards, but that really only matters if you enjoy the content. Books assigned in English class are rarely the enjoyable kind. Classics can be great, but not if they're forced on you. There is less chance for someone to graduate without learning to read than there ever was in the past.

    • Math assigned in Algebra is rarely the enjoyable kind. I guess classes should only teach "enjoyable" things. I'm sure that will work out great.

    • For many teens, most screen time *is* reading... So why would they be at all inclined to read some archaic story just because it's considered literature? It might be better writing by some standards, but that really only matters if you enjoy the content. Books assigned in English class are rarely the enjoyable kind. Classics can be great, but not if they're forced on you. There is less chance for someone to graduate without learning to read than there ever was in the past.

      There's a difference between being able to read and comprehend a novel and being able to read and comprehend the comments on social media. It's the former that teens are lacking, according to these PISA assessments.

      Whether kids should be forced to read "the classics" is a separate question on which I don't have a strong opinion. But compared to the current state, if all kids end up reading is Harry Potter or The Hunger Games (or whatever's considered "enjoyable" at the moment) I'd call it a win. Whateve

  • Out of sight, out of mind? (Score:3)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @02:14PM (#66328860)

    With books, like music, becoming more and more of a digital thing and no physical presence, the whole culture of reading is dying off. Teens aren't seeing other teens read (no books in hands), there's few bookstores around to hang out in to discover the books and with most information online there's no need to go to a physical library.

    Schools can only do so much to force reading with assignments. Without building the habit of reading books for pleasure outside of school there's no way to turn this around.

  • I remember both primary and secondary school reading assignments, neither instilled a love of reading because the books generally just sucked. In primary school (1991–2000) we read books such as: “The Kay”, “Where the Red Fern Grows”, “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes”, “David”, and importantly, the selection of books we could choose from, wasn't good. In grade 6, I got in trouble for bringing a book from the town library, that my teach, Mrs Rosey,
    • What happened when you were at work and you explained to them that you didn't read the report because it wasn't enjoyable enough? Being able to read and understand things, even if you don't enjoy reading them, is a necessary skill. Enjoyment is fine if it runs parallel to the curriculum, but using it as a metric to drive the curriculum is a bad plan.
      • That's not a comparable example, you don't review reports, policies, and licenses for enjoyment or to instill a love of reading such things, you do it because you have to. Schools need to change, stop giving kids terrible, inexcusable piles of crap to read, insist they have to love them, and give them open reading choices, and you might see this reverse. Why stop a kid from reading something? It's not relevant what it is, if a kid wants to read it, let them, and have honest discourse about it, regardless
        • Maybe if you read the classics you would learn how to write. I didn't bother to read everything you wrote, because I'm not about to take someone serious who tries to make an argument against well established education methodology, and clearly never learned to write.

          • because I'm not about to take someone serious who tries to make an argument against well established education methodology,

            Is this the "well established education methodology" that's currently presiding over a huge slump in reading?

            • Even this article doesn't claim a correlation between the drop and some sudden change in methodology. To believe your claim we would have to believe that what worked for decades, and even centuries, suddenly stopped working. Do you think before you comment?

              • That begs the question: did it works for decades?

                The Anglo-American tradition of slogging through "classics" has certainly been going for decades, but then people have been complaining about the literacy rates for as long as I can remember too. So I put it to you that it has not been working well for a very long time.

                • For the sake of argument, let's just pretend that is true. It doesn't explain the sudden drop, does it? Yes, most kids aren't very big on learning, because it requires effort. That is a universal truth. Those same kids become adults, who also aren't very educated. So what? You don't solve the problem by removing learning opportunities from the few that remain. You can't just let every student read whatever they want, because the teacher needs to be able to teach lessons from the content, and they can't read
                  • There is nothing about my argument that suggests kids aren't into learning because they don't like the “classics”, the entire argument is the classics have failed to instill a love of reading. The stereotype is that kid who hates the classics, but, if that has been happening for decades, among a large population of kids, then maybe the kids have a point. What is a kid meant to take from books that lack character development, plot development, and interesting themes?

                    If a kid doesn't like a cl
                    • By your argument education isn't possible, since 80% of all kids don't like to put in the effort to learn. You are also assuming a false equivalence. Reading what you enjoy doesn't always, and often doesn't, result in a good educational experience. It matters far more what you read, than that you read. That's literally why anti-social media is creating a now just under-educated, but miseducated society. Reading matters, but only if you are reading the right words.
                    • Kids do like to learn, I have two daughters in high school, and they have a large group of friends. Everyone likes to learn, they just hate the way everything is taught, and when they object they're silenced on the spot as being idiots, or not understanding why things are taught that way. The math curriculum is a good example of this, they removed the fundamentals, the tested and true mythologies that have been shown to work, in favour of some common core Canadian nonsense. There has been so many times w
                    • Fine, if we're not going to agree, fair enough, have a great week!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MikeS2k ( 589190 )

            Ironic you posting that you didn't bother to read everything he wrote on a post about low standards of reading...

            • Yes. That was the point. I followed his advice, and didn't read it, since I didn't find it interesting. I did glance at it and see that the idiot thinks Romeo and Juliet is "csam", so I didn't need to read the whole thing to know that I would be reading words written by an idiot.
              • It's objectively CSAM, one kid has a make out session with another kid, they think is dead. What do you call that? I would call it CSAM, or, pseudo-necro-paedophilia, or csam-necro-pedophile, or any combination that clearly points out one kids, was having a fucking making out session with another kid they thought was dead. If you don't recognize that, and flag it as a serious problem, what do you want me to say? When you go to a funeral, do you think: I'm going to have a fun night of hot sex with the co

          • Um, that's "seriously", not "serious". Also, you don't need that comma between "methodology" and "and".

            • Your comment would be on point if I had said he isn't able to write perfectly. That's not what I said. You might want to work on your reading comprehension. I concede that I have an extraneous comma. I concede that I should have swyped seriously. Now go back and apply the same standards to the OP, but don't stop there, because writing well is about much more than avoiding an extraneous comma. tldr: You are an idiot.

        • That's not a comparable example, you don't review reports, policies, and licenses for enjoyment or to instill a love of reading such things, you do it because you have to.

          If we accept the premise that school should prepare you to do the things you'll need to do to function in society, does that not imply that school should teach you to read things "because you have to" even if you don't enjoy them? (though FWIW, I vaguely recall enjoying The Cay and Hatchet.)

          That's not to say that there isn't a place for giving kids more freedom in what they read so long as they're reading something. Seems like it'd be a big step up from the current state where a minority of kids read bo

          • I actually agree with that, based on your last statement. Give kids the freedom of choice, and I think you solve many problems. I have two kids in secondary school, and they're also in the reading club. Last night they showed me the “approved reading list”, approved reading list, as in, they have to pick books based off that list, and I think you understood that, to be fair. They're in a reading club, but still can't pick what they want to read, why?

            It's not even that they can't pick what

            • "They're in a reading club, but still can't pick what they want to read, why? "

              The spinster prof doesn't want to discuss 'Lolita' with teen brats.

              • That really gets to the core of the issue, why doesn't the teacher, professor, or whatever want to discuss the book? Even if you disagree wholeheartedly with the theme / plot, you need to be open as an educator.

                That could easily lead into a very dark place, and if that happened, that's a different topic, but for the most part, just keep it open.

    • What you may find, should you revisit them, is that many required books are actually quite good, but were introduced to you when you unable, or incapable, of understanding them properly. Rereading some of these things years later often makes me say to myself "wow, that's actually pretty damn good", when I despised them as a teen.

      • Out of fairness, I'm not opposed to that idea. There are some books I have never tried to revisit; however, I have tried with an open mind to read some works again, and my opinion didn't change enough to sway my overall view. You're pointing out one of the point I raised, the audience is wrong for these works, which is why kids don't continue to read. This is why free choice the route schools should take.
  • This might explain some of the funky grammar we've been seeing for the past few years. I'm talking about university-level students (and even some adults) who always seem to confuse there/their/there; too/to; than/then; and even write like 10-year old children. Plus, when you point this out to them, you get degraded as a "Grammar Nazi." I'm not perfect myself but I've seen 3rd-world immigrants displaying better English skills than supposed native speakers. I only mention this because reading really helps al

  • Reading scores fell more sharply in students from better-off backgrounds

    Sounds like at least we have achieved equality in stupidity!

  • At least Greece is performing even worse than we do.
    Who cares about reading anyway?
    As long as you know the true meaning of the LBGTHI+ alfabet then you're gonna be fine.

  • Screen time and parents are a huge component in any child's education, but we always had TV, laptops, video games, movies, etc... Kids used to watch hours of TV at home instead of iPad. What about talking about how the teachers are also responsible for this? Time to have merit based pay for teachers, and to get rid of permanent teacher tenures. Teachers enjoy a special privilege of not having to perform at work to keep their job, and a special penalty of not being paid competitively to attract them to the b

  • EOM

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