Take our reading habits survey

There are lots of stories at the moment about the death of reading. Times journalist James Marriott wrote a wildly popular piece on Substack (20,000 likes and counting) about “The dawn of the post-literate society – And the end of civilisation”.

And he followed that up with a three-part Radio 4 programme called How Reading Made Us, which argues that our ability to read shaped our brains, our feelings, and our politics, all underpinned by the ominous kicker, “and what might happen if we stop”.

On the face of things, it’s hard to quibble with these sorts of warnings. Both children and adults report spending less time reading for pleasure than in previous generations, and there are obviously many other forms of entertainment that now compete for the minutes in your day.

But I can’t help feeling that something is being lost amongst the headlines. I run an independent magazine club, which means I can’t claim to be impartial, but I spend a lot of time with people who care passionately about both reading and writing, using text to communicate via long essays, captivating short stories, and brilliant nonsense. I’m sure lots of those people also spend a fair amount of time scrolling on their phones, but they might not be entirely happy about that fact. And even if people are generally reading less these days, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t value it.

I wanted to get a better sense of how people do or don’t read, and how they feel about it, so we wrote a short survey, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Typeform reckons that it will take four minutes to complete, and of course it goes without saying that all responses will remain anonymous.

Maybe you’re reading all this and you know you have strong opinions that you’re bursting to share. Or maybe you’re not really bothered. However you feel about reading, we’d massively appreciate it if you could help us by taking part before midnight on Sunday 7th June. We’ll share our findings here on the Stack blog once we’ve had chance to make sense of it all, and if you leave your email address at the end, we’ll add you into our random draw to win a year’s subscription to Stack. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Take our reading habits survey