What’s Really Behind the Decline in Long-Form Reading?

Even the wealthy elite are in on the trend: take Dave Ramsey, for example — in his massively popular podcasts and radio show, his book recommendations almost exclusively lean toward self-help and personal finance guides. Rather than promoting novels or literary works, Ramsey pushes titles like The Total Money Makeover and Think and Grow Rich, funneling his enormous influence into a market of utility-first reading.

When the people at the top reward only “fix-it-now” wisdom, that shapes what the rest of us read — and how we think: less about moral ambiguity, more about measurable outcomes. It results in a society where reading isn’t about grappling with complex human stories, but about tweaking your mindset for more income or efficiency — because when influence comes from the top, what gets amplified is what fits the agenda.

Why Books Feel “Boring”

The biggest villain isn’t laziness; it’s overstimulation. Our brains have been rewired by short-form video and endless notifications. These platforms deliver high-intensity novelty and emotional triggers in seconds, spiking our dopamine levels into the stratosphere.

Data from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) shows that in 2022, only 37.6% of adults reported reading fiction, a steep fall from 45.2% a decade earlier.

Reading literature is a slow-reward system. Compared to the instant rush of TikTok, the nuanced, sustained pleasure of a novel registers as painfully dull. Our collective attention baseline has been so thoroughly inflated that anything requiring more than five seconds of focus seems like a chore.

Empathy Drain: Men Stop Reading Fiction

Perhaps the most troubling statistic is the gender gap. The NEA found that in 2022, nearly 50% of women read fiction, compared to a mere 29.5% of men. This is more than a preference for nonfiction; it’s a loss of vital social training. Research from The New School for Social Research has repeatedly linked reading literary fiction to enhanced Theory of Mind (ToM)—the ability to understand and predict others’ feelings and intentions.

If one half of the population is actively opting out of the primary cultural mechanism for practising empathy, what happens to political and social discourse? It gets colder, quicker, and more dismissive. The “intellectual disconnects” we see in society are the predictable result of this empathy drain.

Immediate Utility: “Manipulative” Reads Reign

Many people haven’t abandoned books—they’ve switched to self-help, business advice, and “hack your life” manuals in overwhelming numbers. The self-help industry is now worth over $10 billion globally. According to recent reports, approximately 85% of U.S. adults read at least one self-help book every year.

The Library Journal’s generational survey shows that 25.1% of Gen Z favour self-help and psychology nonfiction. Meanwhile, the number of new self-help titles published each year has exploded—in one recent analysis by the NPD Group, self-help titles grew from ~31,000 to over 85,000 annually in just a few years.

In a productivity-obsessed culture, people prefer books that promise fixed outcomes (“how to be rich,” “how to lead,” “how to think”) over literature that asks ambiguous, uncomfortable questions.

Education’s Retreat from Depth

It’s easy to blame phones, but the problem starts much earlier. Many educators, under pressure to meet standardized testing benchmarks, have been forced to prioritise informational texts over literary analysis. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and other bodies have pushed curricula toward “college and career readiness”, which often downplays the deep, slow-burning emotional and analytical work required to truly wrestle with complex novels.

When schools treat reading purely as an information retrieval task, rather than a spiritual and emotional training exercise, they effectively tell students that what a book makes you feel is less important than what it makes you know.

The Scarcity Mindset

People constantly say they don’t “have time” to read—but Nielsen data blows up that excuse: U.S. adults now spend more than 10 hours a day consuming media across TV, phones, and computers. By stuffing every quiet moment with podcasts, endless video queues, or background noise, we wipe out the mental stillness that reading actually needs.

Dr Sandi Mann from the University of Central Lancashire shows that boredom boosts creativity and mental wandering, and ironically, that same boredom is the soil in which deep reading sprouts.

If you want to bring reading back, you have to get comfortable with low-stimulus zones, pretend you have a concussion, close your apps, stare at a wall, and let boredom settle in. It’s only then, when your mind is deprived of constant hits, that the slow, immersive rhythm of a novel becomes the most thrilling thing in the room.

The Intellectual Disconnect

When fewer people engage with demanding, canonical works, we lose a common emotional and philosophical foundation. That erodes our “intellectual common ground,” making political debate and social conversation more superficial and tribal.

Without the moral imagination cultivated by literary fiction, which is known to boost empathy and theory‑of‑mind among readers, it becomes harder to relate to others’ experiences, such as the plight of immigrants or the complexity of human suffering. A colder, more disconnected society results, where fewer people can argue nuanced ideas or even feel with one another, and that’s not just a cultural loss, it’s a civic one.

Also on MSN: Life Skills Schools Don’t Teach Anymore

When Ignorance Becomes Cool

Sociologist Richard Hofstadter detailed the cycles of anti-intellectualism in American life. Today, this trend is amplified by social media, which valorizes immediate, high-certainty opinions and treats complexity or uncertainty—the very things literature trains us to handle—as a weakness.

When influential figures proudly declare they don’t read or prefer simple, fixed narratives, it signals to the broader public that deep thinking and reading are a waste of time. It’s not just that people can’t focus; it’s that they are increasingly told they don’t need to.

Why Passive Consumption Kills Creativity

Reading fiction is an active mental process. When you read, your brain is forced to generate the images, sounds, and emotional context of the story—it builds the world from scratch. This process is a massive workout for the visual cortex and the imagination centres.

This requires passive recognition, not active creation. The cognitive rewards for complex, effortful activities (like reading) are being overshadowed by the immediate, low-effort rewards of passive media. We’re losing the ability to generate internal entertainment, making us reliant on external sources. The more you watch, the less you can see in your own mind.

FOMO

The sheer availability of information has become a tax on our attention. We are constantly worried that while we’re immersed in a 400-page book, we’re missing the latest, crucial, minute-by-minute update on social media, the market, or the political scandal of the day.

This anxiety forces a state of continuous partial attention (CPA), a term coined by technology consultant Linda Stone. This is a mode where we are always scanning the perimeter, never fully committing to any one task. The high cost of this self-imposed isolation is often too much for the modern, constantly connected brain to pay. We prioritize the urgent noise over the important silence.

The Ability to Sit With Discomfort

Long-form reading demands patience, uncertainty, and emotional wandering. Digital media bulldozes all three.

A 2020 University of Stavanger study found that digital skimming patterns bleed into print, reducing comprehension and reducing the brain’s willingness to fight through slow passages.

Key Takeaways

• Dopamine Hijack: Short-form content has inflated your neural expectation for stimulation, making sustained focus feel inadequate.
• The Empathy Gap: The massive gender chasm in fiction reading removes the brain’s most effective training mechanism for perspective-taking.
• Utility’s Flaw: Instruction books reward certainty, while literary fiction’s ambiguity builds better emotional reasoning.
• Cognitive Vandalism: Test-focused education has trained students to extract information, not immerse in narrative or wrestle with moral complexity.
• Attention Sanctuary: You must introduce boredom on purpose (low-stimulus environment) to reset your focus so that reading feels genuinely rewarding again.
• Canon Loss: Without a shared reservoir of literary narratives, society lacks common emotional and philosophical anchors.
• Intellectual Flex: A cultural shift increasingly rewards simple, high-certainty opinions over the nuance and effort required by deep thought.
• Imagination Atrophy: Passive video consumption kills the active, world-building muscle your brain uses during reading.
• FOMO Tax: Continuous partial attention (CPA) makes the self-imposed isolation required for long-form reading feel prohibitively expensive.

Disclosure line: This article was developed with the assistance of AI and was subsequently reviewed, revised, and approved by our editorial team.

Why investing for retirement is so important for women (and how to do it)

Why investing for retirement is so important for women (and how to do it)

Retirement planning can be challenging, especially for women who face unique obstacles such as the wage gap, caregiving responsibilities, and a longer life expectancy. It’s essential for women to educate themselves on financial literacy and overcome the investing gap to achieve a comfortable and secure retirement. So, let’s talk about why investing for retirement is important for women and how to start on this journey towards financial freedom.