I am a parent, not a researcher. We have three kids at three very different reading stages, and like most parents I have never had the time to read a 300-page report about reading. A big international one came out this month. So we read it, along with the other studies it points to, so that you do not have to.

The headlines get it half right. Here is what the research actually says, in the order a child lives it.

Most nine-year-olds still like reading

Start with the good news. An international study of fourth graders in 57 countries asked children how they feel about reading. On average, 42 percent said they very much like it, and another 40 percent said they somewhat like it. At nine, most kids are still on our side.

Then something slips

The longest-running survey of American families finds that reading books for fun, and children’s good feelings about reading, fall as kids grow up, with marked declines by age nine that do not rebound. The share of children who read often has been falling since 2010.

That matched what we saw at home. Reading did not stop with a bang. It happened in bursts and then quietly faded.

The scores are moving too

In the United States, the national assessment found that fourth-grade reading scores in 2024 were two points lower than in 2022 and five points lower than in 2019. The people who run the test describe it as a decline that began before the pandemic. Among eighth graders, the lowest-scoring students had their lowest results since the assessment began.

One caution. These numbers describe the country, not your child. They tell us the water is getting colder. They do not tell us whether your kid can swim.

By fifteen, many are rushing

The newest report tested fifteen-year-olds in 91 countries. Across the wealthier countries, average reading scores fell 28 points between 2015 and 2025, and the report is clear that the slide started before COVID.

The detail that stayed with me is about how teenagers read, not only how well. The researchers looked at students who answer fast and get it wrong. That group almost doubled, from 6.6 percent in 2018 to 11.4 percent in 2025. Performance also dropped more on longer texts, and more toward the end of the test. The authors read that as attention and persistence wearing thin. It sounds a lot like scrolling.

What seems to help

This is the part I care about most, so I will be careful with it.

Grown-ups who read. The same report recalls an earlier finding: teenagers whose parents were seen reading at home said they enjoyed reading more. It also notes that reading has lost ground as a favourite hobby among parents, not only among their kids. We are part of this.

Interest at home. Students in almost every country reported less family support than three years earlier. In these studies, family support means simple things: parents who show interest in what their child is learning and talk with them about it.

Reading itself. A review of 99 studies found that how much people read and how well they read move together, and that the link grows stronger with age. The authors describe an upward spiral: children who read well read more, and reading more goes with further growth.

What the research does not say

Almost all of this is association, not proof of cause. Children whose parents read tend to enjoy reading more, but no study here shows that my picking up a book will make my daughter pick up hers. The spiral in that review is the authors’ reading of a pattern, not an experiment.

And none of this research is about any app, including ours. We keep every study we rely on, and its limits, in one place.

What I am taking from it

Two things.

First, reading is not something the kids do while I do something else. If the clearest signal in the research is that children read when the people around them read, then my audiobooks are part of their reading life too, and they should see that.

Second, the question matters. “Did you read today?” is checking up. “What just happened in your book?” is interest, and interest is what these studies measure.

We built Readnauts to make that second habit easier to keep: one place where the whole family’s reading is visible, grown-ups included. But the two things below need nothing except a book and a few minutes.