The Literature Crisis: Why Adolescent Readers Are Not Reading and What Can Be Done About It

The statistics are undeniable and alarming. According to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 33% of eighth graders scored proficient or above in reading—but the more troubling number lies deeper: fewer than 17% of 13-year-olds report reading for pleasure daily, down from 35% in 1984. The American Psychological Association's 2023 study reveals that while teens can decode complex texts, they increasingly avoid narrative fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction—the very texts that develop empathy, critical thinking, and cultural literacy.

This isn't about format. Whether students encounter Shakespeare on a screen or Toni Morrison in hardcover is irrelevant—they're simply not choosing literature at all. Nor is this about displacement theory, the idea that new technologies inevitably crowd out reading. This cultural phenomenon is much more complex than TV or movies taking over. If anything, great readers optimize and maximize technology, especially if it gives them more time to read or high-quality aesthetic experiences.

Life has been a game of competing attractions: radio didn't kill literature in the 1930s, television didn't destroy it in the 1950s, and video games haven't eliminated it since the 1980s. Literature has survived because each generation found adults who helped them discover its power.

This also isn't about AI. Nor is it about whether AI was involved in writing a narrative or not. It’s entirely possible that distant writing and synthetic curators will create engaging and interesting synthetic texts much to the distress of the Humanists. It’s about the narrative, the imagination. Bruner’s possible worlds. While artificial intelligence may change how we create and consume text, the biologically human need for story, for aesthetic meaning, and for creative experience remains constant. The crisis isn't technological—it's pedagogical.

Recent scholarship, exemplified by Lawton's (2024) dissertation, demonstrates how research has penetrated more deeply into the complex nature of adolescent reading than ever before. Unlike earlier studies that often focused primarily on reading fluency, comprehension, or skill development as the benefits of “wide reading,” contemporary research reveals the multifaceted ways Young Adult Literature (YAL) contributes to adolescent identity formation. Before I discuss some older research that almost was, I’ll foreground Lawton’s significant current insights.

Why Adolescents ARE Reading

Lawton's findings show that YAL contributes to readers' identities through five distinct pathways. First, YAL provides reflective space for self-growth and integration, allowing adolescents to process their backgrounds, beliefs, values, and personal narratives. This reflection involves a creating a holistic integration of past experiences with emerging self-concepts.

Second, YAL demonstrably grows perspective-taking and empathic skills in ways that extend beyond momentary reading experiences. Participants in Lawton’s study reported that continued exposure to diverse characters and situations developed their capacity to pause before judgment, consider multiple viewpoints, and engage with differences. As participant Maeve explained, "I definitely feel like reading has given me a lot of empathy that a lot of other people who may not have read as much [don't have]... It's really easy for me to put myself in other people's shoes because of how many times I've done that fictionally."

Third, the research reveals how YAL allows adolescents to see and hear themselves in ways that confirm developing identities. This goes deeper than simple representation, revealing how readers find language for experiences they previously couldn't articulate and validation for aspects of identity they might be questioning. Participant Skye's experience with Felix Ever After provides a compelling example: "I think I'm more settled because, especially like Felix Ever After... it's like I'm allowed to change, and I'm allowed to be who I am."

Fourth, YAL helps adolescents express their voices and occupy their power by providing models of self-expression and confidence at a time when participatory experimentation is at a developmentally all-time high. This dimension reveals how adolescents don't just passively absorb stories but actively incorporate elements into their expressive identities and develop the courage to risk embodying their selves during an especially brittle and slippery transitional period.

Finally, YAL encourages readers to engage with the world, stand up for beliefs, and build community. This fifth dimension—perhaps the most transformative—shows how adolescent reading catalyzes civic consciousness and social action in ways previous research has barely explored. The dissertation reveals how dystopian novels like The Hunger Games prompted readers to question power structures and authority in their own lives. As participant Elena articulated, "I think, especially dystopian because it's like younger people kind of like standing up and just doing all these really risky things and kind of standing up to like a higher government or some kind of higher power. And I think that has helped me."

This finding significantly reconfigures our understanding of reading's impact, demonstrating that YAL’s impact doesn't stop at shaping individual identities but actively fosters democratic participation and social responsibility. Beth's reflection powerfully illustrates this dimension: "Just like… obviously, I see a lot of injustice in the books that is a main plot... It's like something's wrong, and we need to fix it with no matter like how high or low the stakes are. And so, I feel like as I read those things… it just kind of like motivates me to solve an issue, whether it has to do with that book or not."

These discoveries represent a substantial deepening of our understanding of adolescent reading. Rather than viewing reading as primarily a cognitive or academic activity, this research reveals it as a complex, transformative process of identity work that shapes not just how adolescents think but who they become. As Lawton (2024) concludes, these findings demonstrate that reading YAL isn't just about skills or entertainment but about the "beauty and resilience in each of my participants' own stories" and the "intricacies involved in the reading experience when a reader chooses to open a book, enter a world wholly themselves, and emerge from the tale, consciously or unconsciously mended, encouraged, enlivened, and changed."

A Window into What Was Possible: 1996 Research at Ruff Middle School

Recently, while searching through old research files in an upstairs closet, I stumbled across a set of carefully filed interview transcripts from my 1996 dissertation research—old data that now feels prophetic. I’d been looking for these transcripts literally for years. I knew there was something I needed to say about them. They captured middle school students at Ruff Middle School during a period when English teachers were deliberately working to foster voluntary self-selection of books anchored in literary mentorship and community. The books these students reference in the interviews—R.L. Stine's Goosebumps, Alex Haley's Roots, Sweet Valley High—are artifacts of their era. Stein is still moderately popular, but Sweet Valley High is ancient, I understand. The patterns revealed in student responses in these interviews illuminate predictable truths about how young readers develop relationships with literature.

Lost Readers vs. Found Readers: What the Data Reveals

The 1996 interviews followed a consistent protocol with five core questions:

1. Tell me about the book you're reading right now;

2. Tell me about your favorite kinds of books;

3. Tell me about times when you read at home;

4. Tell me how you choose your own books; and

5. How do you see yourself as a reader?

These simple questions exposed a stark divide between "lost" and "found" readers that reveals what can go wrong and what can work in the voluntary development of aesthetic readers.

Lost readers, even when technically proficient, demonstrate no sense of reading history or anchor in real life. They perceive reading as an assigned task for school, disconnected from their identity or interests.

Student #5 in my transcript, when asked about current reading, could barely identify the book: "Uh... R.L. Stine's Goosebumps -- one of the Goosebumps books? I'm not sure." When pressed about favorite genres, the response was minimal: "Horror. Scary books, uh... like, Tales... that's about it." Most tellingly, when asked about reader identity, this student replied: "Not very good. I don't think I do very good, but I try to read." There was no sense of reading as personally meaningful, no connection between books and life experience, no evidence of voluntary engagement beyond compliance. Student #4 demonstrated similar patterns, describing books in vague, disconnected fragments and showing no awareness of how reading might serve personal purposes. These students read when required but showed no evidence of developing taste, critical judgment, or personal investment.

Found readers are personally invested in literary reading and value the pleasures of challenge. They understand that intrinsic motivation is strongest when we feel ourselves growing stronger, more powerful, more capable—which is why their engagement proves durable over time. What is interesting are the parallel seeds between Lawton's 2024 findings and these 1996 interviews.

Student #9 in 1996, reading Alex Haley's Roots, demonstrated deep personal investment: "I'm kind of shocked about some of the stuff that's been happening. I'm finding out that some of this stuff actually happened... I'm reading this because this is going back to my ancestors and other people's ancestors." This student actively sought challenging texts and could articulate why: "I try to find out how the author writes." The connection between reading and personal growth was explicit and valued.

Student #10 showed persistence and sophistication: "I try to read as many challenging books as I can during one school year. Like, this year I finished four, and I've been trying to get through this book, but I've been reading it for almost nine weeks." When asked about challenging books, this student explained: "I don't like a book -- a challenging book to me doesn't have pictures in it because I like to use my imagination for each scene and each person." Here was a reader who understood that struggle leads to strength, that difficulty builds capacity, that literary engagement requires and rewards effort.

What's unusual about this 1996 data is that it captures students in a bubble of history where literary mentorship and voluntary choice were prioritized above teaching the middle school canon. The entire focus of the English class was not to teach literature, but to teach literary reading. The found readers weren't accidents. They were products of intentional pedagogy that valued the growth that comes from voluntarily grappling with difficult narratives.

Lawton's 2024 dissertation reveals similar patterns in contemporary adolescent readers. Her participant Bree echoes Student #9's heritage-centered reading when discussing Sharon G. Flake's The Skin I'm In, explaining how it "made me realize like, the trauma that I've gone through in life" and prompted her to think, "maybe I need to go back and realize... maybe I need to heal this." Like Student #9, Bree found in literature a mirror that reflected her cultural heritage while challenging her to grow through difficult realizations.

The persistence that Student #10 demonstrated in 1996 finds its parallel in Lawton's participant Maeve, who described reading as "sort of how I've grown as a person... what I want to learn. Then I look for books like, sort of figure it out." When Maeve states, "I'll definitely learn in YA books as a 70-year-old," she states explicitly the same lifelong commitment to literary challenge that Student #10 exhibited implicitly.

Both sets of interviews reveal readers who understand reading as a process of identity work. Just as Student #10 valued books that enabled imagination, Lawton's participant Elena articulated how reading allowed her to "experience things that I wouldn't normally experience" and "think like, okay, how would I react to this situation?" Both past and present readers recognize that the value of challenging reading lies in its capacity to expand their sense of self and possibility.

Lawton's findings on how YAL encourages civic engagement also have roots in these earlier patterns. When her participants describe how dystopian novels inspired them to "stand up to like a higher power," they're extending the same pattern of personal investment that Student #9 showed when connecting with ancestral history. Both represent reading that transcends entertainment to become a catalyst for deeper understanding of one's place in society.

What emerges across these studies separated by nearly three decades is the enduring nature of what makes reading transformative for adolescents: choice, challenge, and connection to identity. As Lawton's study concludes, the "magic and companionship YAL worlds and characters have given…my participants remains pivotal in the continued growth of who we are and will be."

Middle School: The Pivot Point for Literary Lives

The Ruff Middle School research confirms what current data suggests: middle school represents the critical juncture where lifetime reading habits crystallize. Students who sustain and strengthen literary engagement through eighth grade stand a better chance of becoming lifelong readers. The 1996 environment that produced found readers included several research-based strategies:

Daily Independent Reading Time: Students had substantial time for self-selected reading. As Stephen Krashen's research from the early 1990s demonstrated, voluntary reading is the single most powerful literacy driver. Even the struggling readers at Ruff had regular opportunities to engage with books they chose.

Robust Classroom Libraries: Students had access to diverse texts at multiple complexity levels. The range from Goosebumps to Roots to classic literature reflects intentional curation that invited browsing and discovery. My colleague and friend Matt Renwick has published work on the benefits of looping the school library into the classroom and of inviting students into the process of ordering books for the school library, another avenue of agency that could send a message to all students.

Choice with Guidance: Found readers developed sophisticated selection strategies through teacher mentorship. They learned to evaluate books, seek recommendations, and navigate literary territories independently.

Challenge Orientation: Most significantly, the culture celebrated students who tackled difficult texts by choice with clear intentions. Student #10's nine-week commitment to a challenging book was seen as admirable persistence, not problematic slowness. Teachers understood that intrinsic motivation catalyzes when students experience themselves growing stronger through effort.

Observables: Diagnosing Reading Identity

The 1996 interview protocol provides a template with typed categories for assessment of adolescent reading development through questions that reveal self-awareness of the role of voluntary reading in development.

Identity Questions: "How do you see yourself as a reader?" Found readers confidently claimed reading identity; lost readers expressed doubt or disengagement.

Agency Questions: "How do you choose what to read next?" Found readers articulated sophisticated selection strategies; lost readers relied passively on assignments.

Challenge Questions: "Tell me about a book that was hard for you." Found readers described persistence and growth; lost readers described avoidance or failure.

Connection Questions: "What book changed your thinking?" Found readers made personal connections; lost readers struggled to identify meaningful reading experiences.

Growth Questions: "How has your reading changed this year?" Found readers could articulate development; lost readers showed little awareness of progress.

The Compliance Paradox: Lessons from 1996

Here lies education's central tension: compliance-based reading instruction produces immediate, measurable results—students complete assignments, pass tests, demonstrate skills. But compliance is the surest way to quash intrinsic motivation. Students who read because they must often stop reading when they can.

The Ruff Middle School environment helped develop found readers among a multi-racial, multi-linguistic, Title I population because it resisted this compliance trap. Teachers understood that durable motivation comes from feeling ourselves grow stronger, more capable, more powerful through our efforts. They created conditions where students could experience the satisfaction of tackling increasingly challenging texts and emerge wiser and stronger with memories of rich aesthetic experiences.

The adjustment to a responsive pedagogy of trust takes decisive action. Trusting students with books that might challenge them, allowing time for the slow work of identity formation, and accepting that the growth that leads to lifelong engagement cannot be rushed or mandated can be a difficult maneuver in highly rigid school. In such circumstances the values of voluntary reading can be practiced in smaller increments of time.

The Enduring Pattern

Twenty-six years later, these transcripts feel both quaint and urgent. The specific books have changed—today's students might discuss The Hate U Give instead of Roots, or graphic novels instead of Sweet Valley High. But the fundamental patterns remain constant: found readers seek relevance and challenge because they understand it leads to self-satisfaction, greater confidence, and personal growth; they make personal connections because reading serves their lives, and they develop sophisticated tastes through choice and mentorship.

The found readers in this 1996 research show what was possible. They remind us that literature's power to transform lives doesn't depend on technology, policy, or programs. It depends on adults who understand that fostering voluntary engagement requires environments where students can experience themselves growing stronger personally as autonomous agents.

The crisis is real, but so is the solution. In middle school classrooms where literary mentorship and communities are prioritized over compliance and coverage, students continue choosing literature. They become the adults who ensure the next generation inherits this historically and hyperhystorically human practice.

Literature's survival depends not on defending it from technological change, but on helping each new generation discover its irreplaceable gifts: the expansion of empathy, the deepening of thought, and the recognition that in really, really, really good books, we find not escape from life, but preparation for living it more fully.