According to research by the analytics group Kantar, 53 percent of UK adults read a book in 2021. Of that group, only 35 percent can be classed as “heavy readers” – those who read 10 or more books in a year. In the US, the picture is even bleaker. The number of adults who read for pleasure has fallen by more than 30 percent since 2004 (to around 19 percent), with the average American choosing to read for just 17 minutes a day.

The explanations for this decline are obvious. For many, books have been replaced by more instant forms of entertainment. In the UK, Ofcom reports that adults spend nearly a third of their waking hours watching television or streaming online. The figures are similar in America, where, outside of working and sleeping, citizens spend most of their time watching television.

Meanwhile, the sporadic pockets of stillness that appear naturally in our days have been invaded by our smartphones. Recent research suggests that most of us check our phones every 12 minutes while we’re awake. Being constantly online provides us with a steady diet of short, scattered bursts of information – texts, tweets, Instagram posts – but hampers our ability to concentrate on things that demand more focus. Compared to scrolling the news or social media, immersing ourselves in a book can feel like travelling by horse and cart: slow, laborious, and unrewarding.

In this culture of instant gratification, reading for pleasure has begun to feel old fashioned. Public figures, including the CEO of Intel computers, a former US president (no prizes for guessing which one) and perhaps most bafflingly, a French culture minister, have all suggested that reading isn’t particularly important. If we want to be the best, most productive versions of ourselves, the thinking goes, we needn’t bother reading poetry or fiction. Even non-fiction can be done away with using apps like Blinkist, which chops books into tiny, summarised chunks and delivers them to you with the simplicity of a social media app.

However, we should make time for books in our lives precisely because they are at odds with our technological age. The novelist Benjamin Kunkel writes that “the experience of being online has at least as much to do with compulsiveness as with liberty.” When so many things demand our attention, being drawn into the orbit of technology feels less like a choice than a subconscious response. Many of us would undoubtedly like to read more, but the irresistible distractions our devices throw at us somehow keep us busy. Like lab rats pushing a lever, picking up our smartphones offers us an endless fix of what the psychiatrist Anna Lembke calls “digital drugs”.

In this context, reading for pleasure becomes a radical act of self-determination. By focussing purposefully on the printed page, we are taking back control of our own attention, and (although it sounds dramatic) our own freedom. Reading helps us practice patience, concentration, solitude, and mindfulness; the virtues most threatened by the breakneck speed of modern living. Often, after a few hours with a book, I’ll check my phone and realise I’ve missed nothing important. Jokes about my social life aside, taking time away from technology reminds us that we do not need to be tethered to a device to be happy, engaged, and entertained. There are better, slower ways to live, and reading helps us embrace them. 

In his essay “The War on Words”, the author Phillip Pullman takes this argument a step further. He suggests that reading literature is a fundamentally democratic act. “It isn’t like a lecture,” he writes, “it’s like a conversation.” When we sit with a book, we are free to indulge our own intellect without judgment or control from others. We can read whenever we want, wherever we want, and in whatever way we’d like to. Want to read the ending first? Go for it. We don’t need permission from anyone. We make our own rules, and our interpretations are naturally – and beautifully – unique to us.

In this way, reading confirms that our perspectives, no matter their shape and size, are valid and worthwhile. How do I envision this character? How do I imagine this scene? Is this line significant? Do I agree with this statement? The process is imperceptible, but we are always answering these questions when we read. No wonder despotic regimes are such enemies of literature. In a disarmingly natural way, it affirms our freedom of thought and sense of identity.

This might sound like claptrap, but it is backed up by science. In a 2009 study, researchers from Washington University observed that “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences.” The areas of the brain we activate when we read “mirror those involved when [we] perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.” The link between ourselves and the literature we read is not merely symbolic. As the poet Wallace Stevens said, “the reader [becomes] the book.”

The digital spaces we inhabit stifle this process of self-actualization. While we populate books with ourselves, our social media feeds are all about others. Although we feel more connected, we also feel less unique. Television and film, too, are naturally passive mediums. The realities they show us are engaging and often beautiful, but we are not included in them. The visual product comes to us fully packaged, with less room for interpretation.

We should thus be wary of abandoning reading as a pastime. The digital world provides us with so much, but it cannot replace the richness of a novel or the satisfaction of deep and contemplative reading. In a world of ceaseless noise and speed, books provide a sanctuary we cannot afford to lose.