青少年阅读：（重新）构建挑战

(Re)framing the challenge Christina Clark, Irene Picton, Aimee Cole andVedika PuriNational Literacy Trust February 2026 Levels of reading enjoyment and daily reading among children and young peoplehave been falling for some time and are now at their lowest point in over 20 years(Clark et al, 2025). Our evidence, alongside wider research, shows thatadolescence is a key point at which reading habits weaken and reading becomesless embedded in young people’s everyday lives. This challenge has been recognised at a national level. In the UK, the National Yearof Reading (2026) places renewed emphasis on supporting reading across the lifecourse, including a focus on maintaining reading engagement during adolescence.This has increased attention on how reading fits into young people’s lives as theyget older. Adolescence matters because it is a time of significant change: increasingacademic demands, reduced free time, greater independence, and shiftinginterests all affect how young people relate to reading. Longitudinal researchhighlights the importance of reading during this stage: young people who readregularly between the ages of 10 and 16 show strong cognitive progress (Sullivanand Brown, 2014) at a time that leads directly into high-stakes examinations in theUK. Evidence also suggests that disengagement during adolescence is rarely aboutrejecting reading altogether. Instead, reading often becomes harder to maintain asyoung people juggle competing pressures and priorities (Clark et al., 2025; Webberet al., 2023). At the same time, teenage reading is taking place in a changing context. Youngpeople encounter and engage with text across a wide range of formats, includingdigital, audio, and media-linked content. Studies of adolescents’ reading practiceshighlight the need to look beyond traditional measures of reading to understandhow reading fits into young people’s lives today (Loh, 2024; Clark et al., 2024). Understanding teenage reading: our approachThis report draws on data from the 2025 Annual Literacy Survey, including responses from more than 80,000 young people aged 11 to 16 and over 46,000written comments. It explores how reading enjoyment and reading habits changeduring adolescence and uses young people’s own words to understand theirexperiences of reading. The report looks at what reading offers young people, what makes it harder to readregularly, and what helps reading fit into their lives. It aims to build a clearer pictureof teenage reading and how it can be supported during adolescence. While it looksat patterns across all young people, it takes a closer look at boys’ experiences,reflecting evidence that boys’ reading enjoyment is particularly low during adolescence and asking questions about how boys relate to reading at this stageof life. What this report shows These findings show that adolescence is a critical period for reading engagement.While reading enjoyment and daily reading have declined over time, many teenagerscontinue to value reading for learning, enjoyment and wellbeing. However,increasing pressure on time, changing routines and competing priorities mean thatreading is harder to sustain as young people get older, even when it is viewedpositively. While overall declines in reading are seen across young people as a whole, they arenot experienced evenly. Patterns vary by age and gender, with some groupsshowing steeper drops in reported enjoyment and frequency. Exploring thesedifferences helps to shed light on the conditions that support or underminesustained engagement. Our new insight into teenage boys’ reading is particularly striking. While readingenjoyment and reading habits decline for both boys and girls in early adolescence,age-related patterns suggest that girls show signs of recovery in lateradolescence, whereas boys’ engagement remains persistently low. Boys’ reading ismore often sustained through habit, routine or perceived usefulness, making itmore susceptible to disruption as routines weaken and demands increase. It is important to note that these patterns do not describe all teenagers. Someyoung people, particularly boys, disengage from reading because it feelsuninteresting or irrelevant to them. Taken together, however, these findingsreinforce the importance of focusing on teenage reading, and on teenage boys’reading in particular, while challenging assumptions that lower engagementreflects disengagement alone. Instead, the evidence points to multiple pathwaysinto reduced reading, including both lost interest and vulnerability to disruption. The key evidence underpinning these findings includes: Reading enjoyment and daily reading are at their lowest levels in over 20 years.In 2025, just 32.7% of children and young people said they enjoyed reading in their free time, which is down from 51.4% in 2005.Daily reading has fallen even more sharply. In 2025, only 18.7% of children andyoung people reported reading daily in their free time compared with 38.1% in2005