Spain Defies the Reading Crisis: Young People Still Read Books
No Spanish Reading Crisis?
Contrary to the narrative of a global literacy decline, new data from the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España reveals that reading for pleasure is actually rising. With 66% of the population and over 75% of young adults reading regularly, Spain has managed to stave off the drop seen in the United States, challenging the myth that digital distractions have killed book culture among the youth.
The data shatters the myth that young people don't read.
- schnitzelstoat
It's not uncommon to see people (and young people) reading on public transport here in Spain. The odd thing is how popular actual paper books are vs. e-readers. Since I got my Kindle in 2015 I haven't read a paper book since.
That said, I find it odd that people assume that reading a book is always higher quality than reading the internet etc. - many books are pretty low quality.
And if we look at stuff like the PISA scores, it doesn't seem like this supposed higher rate of reading is paying many dividends.
- yorwba
The original article is comparing "a 2023 study showing that only 16% of Americans read for pleasure in a given day, down from the (already low) number of 28% in 2004" with "the percentage of the overall Spanish population that reads for pleasure has increased every year since 2017, reaching 66% in 2025".
I think a big part of the discrepancy probably comes from the different time frames. If you ask somebody who reads for pleasure once a week whether they did so on a given day, they'll say yes 14% of the time, but if you ask them whether they read for pleasure in general, they'll say yes 100%, after all they do it every week!
It would be nice if reading researchers could agree on a standard set of survey questions for the purpose of easy comparison.
- erelong
I think from seeing articles like this a few times, that there's a lack of definition from people as what counts as "real reading" and about what materials "count as real reading"
(since I think probably people are reading these days more than ever - it just may be on forums like HN, social media, and AI output, etc.)
so if you just define that specifically then we could just promote it on social media, people reading these specific things, and then "boom" more people are "really reading"
(I presume people want to see more people reading "Great Books of Classic Literature" which is probably a great goal, things like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or Dante's "The Divine Comedy", etc.)
- arjie
Inter-country statistics almost entirely rely on definitional disparity. Border towns are good sources of comparison.
- toolslive
> Democracy is safe in Spain!
iirc, The Prince from Machiavelli is required reading during secondary education. That will surely awaken their political awareness.
- clint
People tend to use the terms "Reading" and "Literate" to be interchangable but they really aren't. I'm sure there are plenty of kids (and adults) who "literally" can't read words and rely heavily on TTS and perhaps STT to interact with the world via their devices.
However the larger and probably more dire issue is of literacy which means you're not only able to read the words but fully understand them and make connections between ideas and be able to communicate what you read to other people. That's the idea that really matters because it unlocks an entire universe of additional learning and a deeper understanding of the world.
The lack of actual literacy is, in my opinion, why America is in such a pickle because there are probably generations of people at this point who fundamentally do not understand what is going on around them (and certainly don't understand any half-way complicated topic or situation) and just float around on "vibes" and their emotions (which they likely also do not understand fully).
- jruohonen
Ref.:
- dzonga
Anglophone countries suffers from social media - with the whole monetization thing driven towards making fake content, rage baiting content that can be consumed in the west & divisive to put people into buckets.