Forget the doom-and-gloom headlines about a generation too glued to its phones to finish a book — new research says Gen Z is reading more than ever, and reaching for paper to do it.
“According to our 2025 data, a growing proportion of Gen Z — 66% — is identifying as readers, up 14 percentage points from 2022,” wrote Kathi Inman Berens and Rachel Noorda, the Portland State University researchers behind a new study on how young people find and read books.
The research, published Aug. 28 by RELEVANT, reads like a direct answer to The Atlantic’s August cover story, “The Age of Reading Is Over,” in which staff writer Rose Horowitch argued that even elite college students are losing the ability to sit with a book. Berens and Noorda’s numbers, drawn from three nationally representative surveys conducted in 2020, 2022 and 2025 and published by Cambridge University Press as “How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books,” tell a different story entirely.
Sixty-five percent of Gen Z readers say they picked up at least one print book in the last year, up from 59% in 2022, and print — not e-books, not audiobooks — is now their preferred format. That’s a real reversal for a generation raised on smartphones and short-form video, one where paper apparently still beats pixels when it counts.
“A longing for ‘digital detox’ is a part of why print books are Gen Z’s top preferred reading format,” Berens and Noorda explained. It’s a small but telling detail: the same generation that grew up glued to screens is now choosing, on purpose, to put one down.
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Libraries deserve some credit too. Thirty-six percent of Gen Z readers say they found their books through a librarian, more than double the 15% who said the same in 2022, and Gen Zers who visited a library reported lower loneliness scores than those who didn’t. That’s worth sitting with for a second — a public institution built around quiet, unhurried browsing is doing more for young people’s sense of connection than another app promising to keep them “engaged.”
It also tracks with what plenty of parents have suspected all along: a shelf of paperbacks doesn’t come with a notification badge, and a trip to the library doesn’t end in a doomscroll. Berens and Noorda’s data suggests Gen Z has figured that out on its own, without a single parental lecture required.
Movieguide® has tracked this same generation reaching for the tangible before. Gen Zers have been snapping up DVDs and Blu-rays for a similar reason they’re picking up paperbacks — Barnes & Noble Music and Video Director Bill Castle put it simply: “People want to own things and build libraries.” The instinct shows up in their spiritual lives too, where Movieguide® has reported Bible reading climbing among young adults who say they’re hungry for something more solid than a scroll.
None of this means Gen Z has sworn off screens, and nobody’s claiming a paperback is inherently holier than a Kindle. But there’s something worth noticing in a generation choosing weight in their hands over another open tab, a librarian’s recommendation over an algorithm’s. For parents trying to raise kids who can still sit still with an actual story, that’s about as encouraging a data point as they’re likely to get this year.
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