In many countries people read fewer books than they did twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago many people read books in the evening or during a journey, but today far fewer people do this. There are clear reasons for this change, and I think encouraging reading is still very important.

The first reason is competition from other entertainment. In the past, if a person wanted a story, he took a book. Today he can watch a series, play a game or look at short videos, and all of this is easier: the film shows everything and the video lasts thirty seconds, while a book requires concentration for many hours.

The second reason is time and tiredness. People work long hours and travel a long way to their office, so in the evening they are exhausted. It is much easier to watch something than to follow a complicated story with many characters.

However, I believe reading is still very important. When we read, we imagine the characters and the places ourselves, so our imagination works, and this does not happen when we watch a film. Reading also improves vocabulary and writing, because we see correct sentences and new words all the time.

In addition, a book explains a subject much deeper than a short article on the internet. If a person wants to really understand history or economics, he must read a serious book, not five minutes of video.

In conclusion, people read less because there are many easier entertainments and because they are tired, but reading remains important for imagination, language and deep understanding, so schools and libraries should encourage it.

Book reading has declined in most countries over the past two decades. The cause is not a loss of interest in stories or ideas but a change in what competes for the same hours, and this shapes how important the decline actually is.

The primary reason is that books now compete against media designed for immediate reward. A television series, a game or a short video delivers something within seconds and requires no effort to begin, whereas a book offers nothing for the first twenty pages and demands sustained concentration to reach the point where it becomes absorbing. When both are available on the same device, the one with the shorter path to reward wins most evenings, regardless of which is more valued in principle.

A second factor is that sustained attention is a trained capacity rather than a fixed trait. Someone accustomed to material that changes every few seconds finds a long chapter genuinely difficult, not merely less appealing, so reduced reading makes further reading harder — a decline that reinforces itself.

As to importance, I would argue it is considerable, though not for the reason usually offered. People read a great deal today — messages, articles, captions — so the loss is not of reading as such but of the long, uninterrupted form. What that form uniquely develops is the ability to hold a complex argument across hours and to follow reasoning that cannot be summarised, and no other common activity now trains it.

There are supporting benefits in vocabulary, in written expression and in understanding subjects at a depth that short articles cannot reach. But the central case is about attention itself, which is why encouraging reading matters more now than it did when there was less competition for it.

In conclusion, reading has declined because it competes with faster rewards, and it is important to encourage precisely because the capacity it builds is no longer developed anywhere else.

It is worth stating precisely what has declined, because the usual framing obscures the argument. People are not reading less; most adults read far more words daily than any previous generation, in messages, articles and captions. What has fallen is long-form reading — sustained attention on a single extended piece of writing — and separating the two is what makes it possible to say honestly how much this matters.

The cause is a competition for attention that books are structurally poor at winning. A series, a game or a short video supplies reward within seconds and requires no investment to begin. A book offers very little for its first thirty pages and only becomes absorbing after a period of deliberate effort, which means it loses on almost every evening when both are available — and since they are now available on the same device, within one gesture of each other, the comparison is made constantly rather than occasionally.

The second cause is that this is self-reinforcing, and the mechanism deserves stating. Sustained attention is a trained capacity, not a fixed trait: someone habituated to material that refreshes every few seconds finds a long chapter genuinely effortful rather than merely less exciting. Reduced reading therefore makes reading harder, which reduces it further. That is why the decline has accelerated rather than levelling off.

On the question of importance, my judgement is that it matters a great deal, though not for the reasons most often given. The claims about vocabulary and imagination are true but weak, because other activities supply both; if that were the whole case, one could substitute films and audio and lose little. The genuinely non-substitutable thing a book provides is the experience of holding a complicated argument in mind across several hours, following a chain of reasoning that resists summary, and tolerating the uncertainty of not yet understanding where it leads.

That capacity is not merely pleasant. It underlies the ability to evaluate a policy, assess a contract, follow a scientific case or resist a compressed and confident version of a complicated question. A population that cannot sustain attention on a long argument is not less cultured; it is more easily persuaded, because it must accept the compressed version of everything.

So the decline matters, and it matters in proportion to how little else now develops that skill. Encouraging reading is worth doing not because books are inherently virtuous — they are not — but because they have become the last widely available training for a capacity a society cannot function well without.