February 2013
Featured in this insight: Culture, heritage & leisure
Survey finds drop in book reading amongst Britons: A YouGov survey carried out on a sample of 2,059 UK adults in January has revealed that reading books as a pleasurable pastime has decreased significantly in modern times.
The study found that a quarter of Britain’s adult population, equating to more than 12 million people, seldom (i.e. less than twice in the past six months) pick up a book to read for enjoyment. In addition, nearly 4 million adults never read books for enjoyment at all.
It was shown that men are more likely to avoid picking up a book than women, with 11% of the men compared to 5% of women who took part in the survey admitting they never read for pleasure.
Lack of time was one of the most common excuses given by respondents for not reading (29%), however 40% claimed they simply preferred to do something else and 26% stated they "didn't enjoy reading very much".
Nevertheless, these UK statistics are better than US figures, since a recent study of Americans found as many as 25% of respondents over the age of 16 admitted to not having read a single book in the last year.
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