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A new research has revealed that the number of teenagers reading traditional media for fun is dropping off at an alarming rate. And it’s not because they’re too busy watching TV.

The American Psychological Association (APA) team, led by Professor Dr. Jean M. Twenge, PhD, looked at data mainly taken from a project called The Monitoring the Future.

The Monitoring the Future (MTF) project, widely known for some years as the National High School Senior Survey, is a repeated series of surveys in which the same segments of the population are presented with the same set of questions over a period of years to see how answers change over time. The survey began with senior classes in 1975. In 1991, similar surveys of nationally representative samples of 8th and 10th graders also started to be conducted annually. In all, approximately 50,000 students in about 420 public and private secondary schools are surveyed annually.

To reach their conclusions, these researchers looked at the survey results from 1975 to 2016, which includes responses from more than one million survey participants. They found that less than 20% of US teens now report reading traditional print media daily for pleasure. While 60% of 12th graders said they read a book or magazine almost every day in the late 1970s, just 16% reported daily reading in 2016. And although 33% of 10th graders said they read a newspaper almost every day in the 1990s, by 2016, this number had dropped to just 2%. However, more than 80% of teens reported using social media every day.

In contrast, digital media use has increased substantially in recent years, with 12th graders spending two hours per day on the Internet during their spare time in 2016, compared to one hour per day back in 2006. As of the mid-2010s, the average American 12th grader reported spending about six hours per day using digital media — roughly two hours each texting, surfing the internet and using social media. In comparison, 10th graders reported an average of five hours of use per day, while 8th graders reported an average of four hours per day. "Time on digital media has displaced time once spent enjoying a book or watching TV", said Twenge.

However, with the rise of e-books and digital devices, the researchers were surprised to find that reading had dropped so steeply. "It's so convenient to read books and magazines on electronic devices like tablets. There's no more going to the mailbox or the bookstore – you just download the magazine issue or book and start reading. Yet reading has still declined precipitously," said Twenge.

Even time spent watching television and movies has declined, although not as drastically. In the 1990s, 22% of 8th graders reported watching five or more hours of television per day compared to just 13% in 2016. Twenge was also surprised that the number of teens going to the movie theater declined only recently, adding that the rise in streaming sites seems to be the cause.