Summary - Reading: Time

Original title: Lees:Tijd

The amount of time that Dutch people spend reading has been declining steadily since the 1950s. This decline in reading time contrasts starkly with the positive personal and social benefits that can be derived from reading, according to lots of research. The Reading: Time Reading in the Netherlands study describes the reading behaviour of Dutch people and how the advent of new devices over the past ten years, such as e-readers, tablets and smartphones, as well as digital media (including social media), has changed the way that people read. The study discusses what, how, how much and when Dutch people read. Who are the readers (on paper and screen) and who are the non-readers? The study also looked at the extent to which reading is combined and/or interspersed with other activities, and whether there are differences between reading on paper and reading on a screen in this respect. Finally, the study also looked at the influence of time pressure on reading behaviour.

In order to investigate trends in Dutch reading behaviour over the period 2006-2016, data were drawn from the last three instances of the Time Use Survey (TBO), which has been conducted regularly over a long period. The data from the Media: Time studies from 2013 and 2015 were used to provide a detailed picture of reading in the digital media landscape.