The annual Understanding of the Children’s Book Consumer survey by Nielsen Book Research, funded by publisher Egmont, shows that just 51 per cent of three- and four-year-olds were read to daily last year, down from 69 per cent five years earlier.
More than 1,590 parents of children from birth to 13 and 417 parents of 14-to 17-year-olds took part in the survey last autumn.
The reasons parents gave for not reading to their child daily included not having enough energy at the end of the day (19 per cent) and that their child preferred to do other things (16 per cent).
The publisher Egmont said the decline correlated with an increase of almost a fifth in the proportion of toddlers watching online video content daily between 2013 and 2017, and warned the ‘steep decline in three and four-year-olds reading and being read to signalled a ‘significant threat to child development, with potential long-term social impact.’
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