Robin Crotty explores the evolving habits of UCD students, examining how technology, social media, and daily life shape what they read, how they read, and why reading still matters - grounding her analysis through a survey of UCD students conducted by OTwo.
In the last number of years, experts have been reporting a decrease in our attention span, an increase of screen time and noticeable shifts in how we choose to spend our time. With all of this information floating around the cultural consciousness, it is commonly accepted that reading habits have changed dramatically in the last number of years. But moral panics surrounding reading rates are not new. If you step into the archives, newspapers were predicting the death of the book as far back as 1907. As a society, we thought the radio would bring about the end of reading. Then, the television. Currently, our attention is divided between smartphones and social media as the harbingers of the reading apocalypse, and AI as the technological development that could end both our reading and our writing.
However, literacy rates in Ireland have been improving steadily in recent decades. In 2022, young Irish students were recorded as the best performing in reading literacy among the 37 countries in the OECD and the 26 EU countries. Reading as a hobby or ‘being a reader’ as an identity is seen commonly across social media and often out in public. In 2024, The Guardian reported that the number of book club events on Eventbrite had increased by 350% since 2020, and online there is an abundance of accounts dedicated to reading. Dua Lipa hosts the Service 95 book club, currently boasting 181,000 followers and the “internet’s resident librarian”, Jack Edwards, holds 3 million followers on TikTok, exclusively discussing and recommending books. Despite the common rhetoric that ‘Bookstagram’ and ‘BookTok’ promote shallow, easily digestible books, many of these accounts emphasise both the classics, and modern highly acclaimed books.
This widely held notion that social media only pays attention to shallow ‘lowbrow’ content extends to all forms of art, such as music, with many worrying that more and more artists are shifting their music to appeal to TikTok. Again, aspects of this are true, with literary agents and editors seeking more ‘Romantasy’, YA novels and self-help books due to trends on TikTok. However, the world of publishing has always raced to keep up with pop culture trends. There is increasingly niche marketing of books due to social media. Walk into Dublin bookstores, into Books Upstairs, Dubray or Hodges Figgis and you'll see a display stand dedicated to ‘Sad Girl Walks Around Dublin’ inspired by Sally Rooney, or ‘Trending on BookTok’ with recommendations ranging from Colleen Hoover to Bernadine Evaristo to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. According to a survey carried out by OTwo, the majority of the UCD students reported that they read mostly literary fiction and romance novels, with non-fiction close behind. Many of the novels UCD students are reading right now have been a topic of discussion on social media; this is in no way a bad thing. These trends have pushed both books published decades ago and new debut novels into the spotlight.
The Atlantic published a damning article in 2024, titled The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books, detailing, as promised, the diminishing abilities of students in elite colleges to immerse themselves in substantial texts. Similarly to the UCD students who completed the survey for this article, students overwhelmingly cited phone use as a restricting factor in their ability to engage with literature. Of the students who answered whether they wished they read more, 85% said yes - so what exactly is preventing this habit from being established? Alongside phone use, students reported a “lack of motivation”, being “too tired”, no time between work and school, and college mandated readings taking priority. UCD students tend to read at night, or on their commute to college, with a majority (59.2%) who read for pleasure reading from under an hour to 2 hours, with a surprising 18% reading 5 hours or over each week.
Experts like Professor Maryanne Wolf, an advocate for literacy, have raised concerns over the loss of “deep reading”. As those living in the digital age, on average we read significantly more, in the forms of captions, text on short form videos and online communication. The sustained attention required for a novel is not required in “shallow reading”. Our ability to read critically, sceptically or empathetically is reduced when we do not practice it, a dangerous trajectory in an age where misinformation and disinformation run rife.
Undoubtedly, we should all be reading more, both to learn about reality and to learn how to imagine other realities, to escape our routines and be immersed in other worlds. So, if you're looking for a place to start, here’s a selection of what UCD students are reading right now:
- ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt;
- ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ by Ocean Vuong;
- ‘Infinite Jest’ by David Foster Wallace;
- ‘Notes to Self’ by Emilie Pine;
- ‘Mythos’ by Stephen Fry;
- Dazed Magazine.