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Generation Alpha’s ages span from 1 to 13, but despite their youth, the next generation is already facing a roster of problems. Be it climate change or the impact of artificial intelligence, there’s a host of concerns about issues facing young people today; among them is a burgeoning reading crisis.
The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading results revealed significant challenges in student literacy across the country.
Only 31 percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading. 40 percent scored below the NAEP Basic level, representing a larger share of students than in 2022. Among eighth-grade students, 33 percent scored below the NAEP Basic level, the largest percentage recorded for that grade.
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The downward trend has alarmed experts.
And behind the low test scores, the number of children who read for fun outside of school is plummeting. In 2025, 14 percent of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun almost every day, compared to 27 percent in 2012, according to the Nation’s Report Card.
Young boys are facing a particular struggle.
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Globally, women are disproportionately affected by illiteracy. Worldwide, at least 739 million adults still cannot read and write, and two-thirds of them are women, according to UNESCO.
But in the U.S., boys are struggling with reading more than their female counterparts. These struggles aren't new, with girls having consistently outperformed boys in reading assessments over the years.
“One ubiquitous trend across the U.S. and the globe has been the underachievement in reading and reading engagement of boys relative to girls. This gender-based performance trend has been recognized for years and persists to this day,” William G. Brozo, Emeritus Professor of Literacy at George Mason University told Newsweek.
The most recent NAEP data show that girls continued to outperform boys in reading in both fourth and eighth grades, with the gap persisting across more than two decades of national assessments.
The broader picture of literacy in America is also a cause of concern, according to studies by the National Literacy Institute in 2024, with more than 1 in 4 U.S. adults now reading at the lowest level, according to the NIL.
The decline in reading poses a number of problems, whether it’s performance in school, entry into college or advancement in the workplace. More broadly, there are concerns about the loss of reading and how it can help to develop both critical thinking and empathy.
So, why are Gen Alpha boys in the U.S. facing a reading crisis, and what needs to be done to solve it?
Newsweek spoke to experts to find out more.
The Crisis in Reading
“There has been a global decline in reading engagement for both genders, though more pronounced for boys,” Brozo said. “This decline often tracks closely to reading achievement; thus, as engagement levels slip reading scores do as well.”
Matt Eicheldinger is a New York Times bestselling author of books for all ages with a background in middle school teaching. Speaking to Newsweek over email, he said that in his view there are two key driving factors in the reading crisis facing Gen Alpha. The first is “the increasingly early use of smartphones.”
Eicheldinger explained that for many years, he taught in a mainly affluent suburb, where students were getting smartphones at younger ages.
“It was striking how quickly we began noticing changes in student behavior, attention spans, focus, and, perhaps most noticeably, sustained reading,” he said.
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But it’s not just a screens problem. Eicheldinger pointed to the “decline of reading being modeled at home” as another driving factor.
He noted: “We’ve lost something important. Before smartphones became so prevalent, families were more likely to read together or, at the very least, have books around the house for children to pick up when they were bored.”
“When a child has unlimited access to entertainment that offers immediate gratification, a book has a much harder time competing,” he added. “And when children don't see the adults in their lives making time to read, it's difficult to convince them that reading should be a priority.”
But not everyone agrees that it’s a crisis.
David Reinking, a Professor Emeritus of Education at Clemson University, told Newsweek that there were “widespread misunderstandings about the issue.”
Citing current NAEP scoring, Reinking said that the simplest way to make the point may be to compare today's scores to those in 1992 when the test was first administered, to see how different they are.
“The answer is ‘hardly at all,’” he told Newsweek over email. “We may not be satisfied to have made little progress and disappointed that we have lost some gains, but it’s hard to consider today’s scores a crisis if there was no perceived crisis in 1992.”
What Can Be Done To Fix It?
A tempting response to hearing about the literacy crisis may be to simply advise young boys to pick up a book.
But the situation is more complicated.
“If we want students to think critically, read with volume, and engage with increasingly rigorous texts, we need to expose them to more reading,” Eicheldinger told Newsweek. “There is only so much rereading we can do during a school day, and schools can't be the only place children encounter books.”
John Guthrie, a professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, pointed to technology as a driving factor behind the crisis, telling Newsweek: “Unquestionably, most uses of technology interfere with reading activity.”
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“Scrolling through pictures and stories detracts from reading comprehension, and it does not support reading engagement,” Guthrie added. “Time spent on computers and tablets is oriented to videos, scrolling, and shifting topics rapidly. These practices contradict the focus of gaining knowledge from text, which has traditionally been the center point of reading and enjoying books.”
Guthrie said that achievement increased when teachers focused on comprehension instruction and fluency development, and when students read high-interest materials that they found gratifying.
“School-wide efforts can be made to bring literacy into prominence and bring books into the center of learning,” Guthrie added.
But the key to solving the reading crisis may lie in solving an even more complicated problem.
Socioeconomic background is one of the clearest dividing lines in American reading performance.
The NAEP reports results separately for students identified as economically disadvantaged, a classification historically based on eligibility for the National School Lunch Program.
In both fourth and eighth grades, economically disadvantaged students recorded lower average reading scores than their more advantaged classmates. The eighth-grade results were equally concerning. Scores fell between 2022 and 2024 for both groups, meaning poorer students remained substantially behind even as performance deteriorated across the socioeconomic spectrum.
Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, singled out one key reason to Newsweek when looking at what's driving the reading crisis.
“Zip codes,” Wolf said. “It is unconscionable that where the child goes to school affects reading performance.”
Though Reinking disagreed with characterizing the issue at hand as a crisis, he noted: "The reasons are largely due to an increase in economic disparities and the many associated stresses.”
“Disadvantaged students consistently score lower,” he said, adding, “If we want to increase academic achievement and raise test scores, we need to address the root causes of poverty and improve the lives of the most disadvantaged in our society.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Cristina Diciu.
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