American adults are reading for pleasure less than they used to. While researching for the “Ready, Set, Read!” social media campaign, I discovered just how much less they really are. Test Prep Insight’s website shared a 2024 national survey, in which nearly half of the respondents hadn’t read a book in over a year. In 2022, The World Economic Forum published a chart that shows how much reading has declined among Americans 15 or older and from 2004 to 2019, the average minutes spent reading per day dropped by 7 minutes. This is exactly what I hope to change.
The idea for “Ready, Set, Read!” came from my love of reading and my desire to encourage other adults to read. I had a hunch that many adults weren’t reading, but my research proved it. My first social media post for this campaign discussed the benefits of reading. Now, I’m focusing on the actual decline. In order to truly address the decline in reading, I also needed to find a way to encourage it.
#BookTok Books
I knew I wanted to showcase the decline of reading in a creative way. Immediately I knew it should be in video format for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Facebook Reels. TikTok in particular because of the popularity of #BookTok on that platform. I spent time thinking about different concepts for the video. I landed on an idea that combines educating adults on the lack of reading in the US, while simultaneously encouraging it. I used a stack of books, many of which were recommended to me from #BookTok. As I pull away each book, a new fact about the decline of reading appears. The idea is that when someone sees this video, hopefully, they’ll begin thinking about the last time they read. When they realize it’s been a while and they want to get back into it, there’s a whole list of book recommendations already there. The books I showed are all entertaining reads of various genres, which allows different people to find something they might like, while also being titles that I think are great for getting back into reading. One of the best ways to enjoy reading for pleasure is to read books you actually like, which is part of what I’ll be exploring in my next project for this campaign.
Gillian Rainville | QU Graduate Blog 
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