By William Dee Nichols
Professor of Literacy, Language and Culture, University of Maine
And Michelle Kearney
Professor of Literacy, University of Maine
The following article was first , an independent nonprofit news organization that shares faculty expert analysis with a global audience.
Reading allows children to live in a vibrant world, surrounded by fairies, elves and talking animals, transporting them to places where the impossible becomes real. But reading for pleasure also helps children and broadens how they view, interpret and . It gives them a form of expression that fuels their imagination and empathy for themselves and others.
But the percentage of children who read for fun is declining.
Just 37% of 9-year-olds and 14% of 13-year-olds almost every day in 2025, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. By middle school, just 1 in 7 kids say they read for pleasure each day.
The U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 National Center for Education Statistics has in kids and teens who read for fun, finding that in 2023, 14% of 13-year-olds read for fun each day, down from 27% who said they did so in 2012.
Slightly younger kids tend to read for pleasure a bit more. Approximately 39% of 9-year-olds said they read for fun in 2022, down from 53% of 9-year-olds who said they did so in 2012, according to the Department of Education.
This trend is showing up alongside another concern: , especially among teenagers. It鈥檚 tempting to treat those as separate problems. But as scholars of literacy, we don鈥檛 think they are.
Reading for fun isn鈥檛 just about fun
Outside of schoolwork, a child can read anywhere from as or more for the most voracious readers.
This gap can why some children鈥檚 vocabularies grow so much faster than others.
Kids absorb words from context, over and over, across thousands of pages. One of us, for example, has a son named Andrew, who, at the age of 2, once absorbed and correctly used the word 鈥渧iaduct,鈥 without anyone defining it for him, after he encountered it in a book about trains.
Older kids and teenagers who describe themselves as committed readers tend to have since they were young, kept books around as their interests changed and made reading together a genuine priority.
A well-selected book, in particular, has the ability to enhance a child鈥檚 reading pleasure and reading ability, allowing them to with fresh insight.
Research shows a connection between teenagers who read for pleasure as young children: They tend to score higher on , memory and speech development.
Reading for pleasure can also help build vocabulary and reading fluency while .
Reading to develop empathy
There are other benefits to reading that won鈥檛 show up on a reading assessment.
We believe that reading is empathy operating in its simplest form: imagining your way into and understanding the ripple effects of their actions.
Reading for pleasure, especially the kind that starts on a parent鈥檚 or caregiver鈥檚 lap, is one of the earliest and most reliable places kids get repeated practice doing that complex work.
Reading with a caregiver often progresses into children reading on their own, whether with a flashlight in bed or in the middle of the day on the couch.
When children become immersed in a book series on their own, in particular, it can help them develop connections with characters they grow to know, love or scorn. They inhabit a character who isn鈥檛 them. They sit with an idea long enough to understand why someone acts the way they do.
Feeling emotionally invested in a character鈥檚 decisions can also influence how young readers and treat people with civility and kindness in real life.
This skill doesn鈥檛 arrive automatically with age. It is built through practice, and recreational reading in childhood is the main training ground for it.
Implications for school and home
Within the past 10 years, many schools have invested in , with a renewed emphasis in to improve students鈥 reading proficiency.
This shift has been an important and necessary step in helping students develop the foundational skills they need to become successful readers. At the same time, some classrooms and reading simply for enjoyment.
In 2024, literacy researcher recalled whether a classroom reading activity had made him a better reader. The child responded, 鈥淣o, because it鈥檚 fun.鈥
Already, that young student senses that fun and learning have been filed into separate categories at school. This highlights the real cost of letting effective instruction and engaging instruction drift apart, as though a teacher must choose between them.
This doesn鈥檛 mean abandoning structured reading instruction, which matters enormously for students who are learning to decode written language by connecting sounds and symbols. It means reading a book that a child actually chose, rereading an old favorite, and allotting time for a teacher to read aloud purely because it brings joy to the class.
This effort extends outside of a classroom. When children live in homes where they see books around, where their parents and siblings read together, and where their caregivers also read for fun, they are likely to see reading as enjoyable and .
People who enjoyed reading as children are more likely to .
We each read to our children from when they were young and watched as they grew and developed their own love of books, ranging from the 鈥溾 comic series to the 鈥溾 and 鈥溾 series.
Another one of us, Dee, has a daughter named Addie who remains an avid reader in her early 20s. She is currently reading the 鈥溾 fantasy series, among others.
And Andrew, the 2-year-old who once learned the word 鈥渧iaduct鈥 from a book, is still an avid reader. At 18, his shelves are now filled with manga and comic books, including a special section for 鈥.鈥 His choice of genre and formats has evolved over the years, but his joy of getting lost in a story has not.
That鈥檚 the version of reading we鈥檇 like more kids to fall in love with 鈥 before school, however well meaning, might convince them that fun and learning have to live in different places.
Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu
