With the rise of short-form content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the issue of short attention spans is increasingly prevalent. Unhealthy screen use peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic, with children and young adults’ screen time increasing by 52% in the UK between 2020 and 2022. The addictiveness of short form content is due to dopamine releases every time we scroll, and rewarding our scrolling with instant gratification. Constant engagement with this easily digestible content makes focusing on more complex and long-form content harder. Short-form content does not encourage us to think critically and is often unsubstantial in context and information. As reading requires complete immersion on one topic, the enthrallment in our screens has dissuaded us from picking up books.
The accessibility of screens to younger generations has inevitably resulted in reading enjoyability and frequency declining. The National Literacy Trust has reported a 36% decline since 2005 in reading enjoyment levels of 8-18 year olds in the UK, as well as less than 1 in 5 children reading daily in their free time in 2025. With the availability of screens and short-form content rising, children are increasingly opting for screens over books. But it’s not just children who are spending less time reading. A 2025 YouGov survey found that “40% of Britons haven’t read a single book in the last 12 months.” Comparatively, the average screen time on mobile devices for an adult in the UK is three hours per day, with social media accounting for an average of one hour and 52 minutes of this time. As an increasingly unpopular hobby for both adults and children, reading has become an inferior pastime. This is an issue for the survival of influential literature that helps us form opinions and have greater understanding and empathy. Exposure to such diverse topics and social political issues develops our critical thinking in a way that scrolling through meaningless bite-sized media cannot.
Instead of picking up a book before bed, more people are using their phones. YouGov found that “Nearly nine out of ten (87%) say they look at their phone/tablet within an hour before going to bed… six in ten (61%) say they usually look at their phone/tablet screen before bedtime.” Blue light from our screens keeps us awake by disrupting melatonin production. By swapping scrolling for reading you can significantly improve sleep quality by calming the mind and inducing a relaxed state. As well as a bedtime ritual, scrolling is convenient during the day because it allows us to multi-task. We can scroll while watching TV and have a conversation simultaneously, but this high media multitasking is linked to poorer performance on cognitive tasks.
The popularity of audiobooks and the Kindle also indicates the inconvenience of the physical book. The Kindle can condense a whole library’s worth of books into a portable tablet. Audiobooks allow us to read (with our ears, not our eyes) while commuting, working, and exercising. Not to mention that they open up reading to those with visual impairments that would otherwise prohibit them from doing so. On the one hand, audiobooks and e-readers suggest that reading still matters. On the other, the art of reading, an activity designed to pull you away from everyday life, is being replaced with a slicker, quicker version that for the majority is based in convenience rather than need. As screens become increasingly present, books have had to become easier to digest, fighting to stay relevant in an increasingly online society. The modification of books to make them more convenient shows how literature is being streamlined to slot into our lives; without these adjustments reading, is viewed as a time-consuming chore.
In response to this, the book market has shifted its focus to easy reads that sell based on their simplicity. An author that has benefited from this trend is Colleen Hoover, with It Ends With Us becoming the best-selling book of 2022. It has sold 10 million copies to date, and was turned into a film in 2024. For some critics however, it falls short on actually delving into the protagonist’s emotional turmoil. The writing feels fan fiction-esque and cringeworthy. It is not the deep, emotional novel it promises to be and it does not explore the physical and mental complexities of leaving an abusive relationship. The popularity of It Ends With Us echoes the Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) phenomenon that saw women reading erotic fiction in public and using it as an escape. E.L. James’ novel was the best-selling book of the 2010s. Its uninspiring storyline, poor quality writing, and repetitive phrasing was irrelevant; it made women, especially middle-aged, unfulfilled women, feel seen. Immersing in a fictional world through reading is not an issue, but fantasising and glorifying abusive, controlling male figures, is.
The marketability of romantic fiction lies in its superficial storylines that mimic the enjoyment we get from short-form content. These books are preferable for shorter attention spans in comparison to, for example, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens – novels that are deliberately slow to read. The marketing of books as ‘bingeable’ also relates to consumer desire for constant new content. Like short-form content, “binge-viewing a show produces a continuous stream of dopamine in our brains” – the same can be applied to bingeable books. It is chasing a story rather than being truly involved in it. Sarah J. Maas’ romance-fantasy series ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns and Roses) is one of the most recommended series on ‘BookTok’, with reviewers often boasting how quickly they read it. But are these bingeable books just a further indicator of unstimulating writing? Critics of Maas highlight the overuse of traditional romantic tropes, even branding ACOTAR as “a smutty retelling of Beauty and the Beast” with repetitive sexual content. Not only is this problematic because they are promoted as Young Adult books, but it also indicates that the majority who enjoy her books are reading at a more junior level than they should be. Although trashy romances have had their place on book shelves and airport lounges for many years, there is something to be said about this plethora of fanfiction style writing being published and widely read. Short attention spans are undoubtedly contributing to how the book market is reacting to this type of literature, and it is clearly accommodating it to stay relevant.
Craving instant gratification is destroying reading habits. Despite the mass of books, published it appears increasingly hard to find meaningful literature amongst bingeable easy reads that have no literary value. Shorter attention spans have caused an increase in more digestible literature. Reading complex literature enriches our brains in a way that bite-sized media cannot, which helps to improve concentration and prolonged focus. Our brains need to be challenged and supplemented as much as our bodies need to be fed healthily and exercised. Literature should help us understand situations we have experienced and are yet to encounter. It should be meaningful and challenge us to think critically. By incorporating long-form content and challenging novels into our lives, we increase our capabilities to understand and have empathy in the nuances of society, and learn to be independent from our screens.
Words by Grace Kemp
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