Social justice is destroying the pleasure of reading

Telegraph

10-03-2025

In news that will depress English teachers like me everywhere, new polling suggests that 40 per cent of Britons have not read or listened to a book in the past year. There are some fairly predictable demographic differences: people who have picked up a book in the past 12 months are more likely to be older, women and middle-class.
Yet the overall picture remains the same: whether paperback or hardback, fiction or non-fiction, physical or audiobook, people simply aren't reading as much anymore.
Screen-time is the obvious culprit. We are so used to consuming the world in snippets on our smartphones – posts, video clips, episodes – that the sustained concentration of reading has become too challenging for our overstimulated brains.
Mornings previously spent reading in bed are now replaced with scrolling through social media; commutes have become time for composing e-mails rather than devouring spy thrillers; quiet evenings are dominated by binge-watching limitless TV while books lay untouched.
In our world of shiny new toys, we have collectively forgotten what a gift reading is, and the dopamine hit from our omnipresent screens will always win over the more subtle and long-term pleasure of the page. As the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson put it: 'we are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.'
Yet, as someone who is regularly searching for reading recommendations for reluctant teenage readers, there is something else that I have noticed: it is increasingly difficult to find a really enjoyable story.
If students (and adults) are going to push through the addictive pull to look at their phones rather than a paperback, then they need something entertaining or escapist. But what readers want and what readers get are no longer the same. Publishing is stuck in an ideological cul-de-sac. Books must be about 'lived experience', social justice and trauma.
Award-winners are chosen for the correctness of their message or the cultural experiences they represent rather than the quality of their writing. Identity has trumped character, and timely 'issues' such as race and sexuality have trumped narrative.
Take The Trinity Schools Book Award. It showcases contemporary fiction for 11-to-14 year olds. This year, for their older readers, among the books they have shortlisted are Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield, which explores 'colourism' in Jamaica, and The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, a 'queer fantasy'.
These 'timely' topics may appeal to some young readers, but in my experience students tend to prefer books that aren't easily summarised by hashtags and buzzwords. The Arc of a Scythe series by Neal Shusterman, for example, is a dystopia that is exciting precisely because it is morally grey.
Reading is ultimately a habit, and habits need to be practised. Parents need to role-model reading to their children; teenagers need redirecting to a book rather than a blue light before bed; and adults need to remember that reading is one of the best activities to do in our busy world.
For reading to be a habit rather than a chore it needs to be enjoyable, and publishers should focus on giving readers a diverse range of really good stories rather than a good range of really diverse characters.