Early-elementary teachers work hard all year to support their students’ emerging reading skills. The payoff—gains in literacy progress—tends to come toward the end of the school year, just as it’s time to break for summer. That would seem the perfect time for emerging readers to hone their literacy skills by leisurely reading for pleasure, either by themselves or with a caretaker.
But the likelihood of young children spending significant time during summer immersed in a good book has dwindled significantly in recent years, surveys suggest. TV shows, online videos, and mobile games are competing for—and often winning—children’s attention, and today’s parents, too, are less interested in reading than were prior generations.
It’s important for educators to encourage parents to regularly read aloud to their children, literacy experts say.
“Reading aloud is a shared experience that builds human connections and provides children with a model of what good reading sounds like, especially if the reader uses expression and dramatizes the story even a little bit,” said Sue Corbin, a literacy specialist and board member of the International Literacy Association.
Reading for pleasure is on the decline
Historically, children’s formative reading experiences often started at home. But the rise of screen time for young children might be cutting into those experiences, according to recent statistics.
Eleven percent of children ages zero to 2 in the United Kingdom spent one to three hours a day on a screen in 2014. By 2019, that percentage rose to 42%, according to the National Literacy Trust, an advocacy organization based in London.
Similarly, a 2019 National Institutes of Health study that surveyed U.S. parents of nearly 4,000 children found that 12-month-old children averaged 53 minutes of screen time daily; by 3 years of age, that daily amount jumped to 150 minutes per day.
As their screen time increases, young children are less likely to be read to by their parents. In a 2025 nationally representative survey by HarperCollins UK, less than half (41%) of U.K. parents surveyed said they read frequently to their children ages 4 and younger—down from 64% in 2012. Just 36% of parents with children 5 to 7 years old said they regularly read to their kids. And 40% of survey respondents agreed that reading to their child is fun.
“When children are read to frequently, they very quickly come to love it and become motivated to read themselves. Children who are read to daily are almost three times as likely to choose to read independently compared to children who are only read to weekly at home,” wrote Alison David, the consumer-insight director at Farshore and HarperCollins Children’s Books, in a press release tied to the survey.
Recent statistics seem to support David’s assertions. An estimated 39% of American 9-year-olds in 2022 reported that they read for fun almost every day, down from 53% in 2012, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In that same survey, just 14% of 13-year-olds surveyed reported reading for fun almost daily, down from 27% in 2012.
Why fewer parents read aloud to children
Several factors may be squeezing out the once-popular act of reading aloud to children routinely at home; busy lives, the allure of screens, and changing sentiments around reading’s purpose top the list.
“For parents who have grown up on screens, reading for pleasure is something that not a lot of them do,” Corbin said.
Notably, the HarperCollins study showed how adults’ and children’s perceptions of reading’s intended purpose has shifted in recent years. Generation Z parents, those born between 1997 and2012, who participated in the survey and are considered “digital natives,” were more likely than older parents (Millennials and Generation X) to say they view reading as “a subject to learn” as opposed to a “fun or enriching activity.”
Twenty-nine percent of children ages 5 to 13 who responded to the survey agreed that reading is “more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do.”
The study’s authors suggested that this sentiment contributes to the decline in pleasure reading, and literacy experts agree.
“Anyone who has ever taught kids or even had children know that kids aren’t going to want to do something if it’s not fun,” Corbin said.
Yet, there is a multitude of benefits gained when children hear stories read aloud.
“Reading aloud helps grow a child’s vocabulary and their understanding of the world,” wrote Carol St. George, the director of the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education and Human Development, on the university’s teaching and curriculum blog.
What’s more, the activity doesn’t require extensive time. “It only takes 15 minutes a day to nurture this growth,” St. George said.
Accessing reading resources during the summer
Public libraries offer air-conditioned respites for families who want free access to books during the summer. But they’re underutilized.
“We tell parents, ‘Take your kids to the library,’ but we know they’re not always going to do that,” Corbin said.
In 2016, a Pew Research Center survey found that 44 percent of Americans had visited a local library or bookmobile within the last year. Those data appear to be the most recent available on the topic and, given recent statistics that show a dip in pleasure reading, it’s not likely that library visitation has increased in the almost 10 years since then.
Historically, teachers have sent students home in the summer with bags of books, recommended or required summer reading lists, and information on reading programs hosted by local libraries. Parents can now also provide their children with access to free digital books without physically entering a library.
Other digital options that teachers can share with parents include:
- For English learners: The Rosetta Project has free online books that offer translations in many languages.
- For a read-aloud option (other than mom or dad): MrsP.com, a free children’s entertainment website, features actress Kathy Kinney as Mrs. P, who narrates classic children’s stories.
- For online children’s books categorized by age range: FreeKidsBooks.org.
Educators, have you found successful ways to encourage parents to keep their emerging readers engaged in reading over the summer? Share with us here.
