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A friend sent a meme in a group chat last week that, like many Internet memes before it, managed to become deeply embedded in my brain and capture an idea in a way that more sophisticated, detailed prose doesn’t always do. Somewhat ironically, this meme was about the evils of the Internet.
“In 1999 people were using the Internet to escape reality,” read the textOn frequently used image from a tv series A face looking out of the car window. Below this was another face looking out the window of a different car, with the text: “In 2026 people are using reality to escape the internet.”
Oops. So simple, yet so precise. With AI-generated sloppiness – sorry, content – now overtaking human-generated words and images online, social media use appears to have peaked and “dumb phones” are being touted as this year’s status symbolIt feels as if the tide is beginning to turn towards the general disintegration of life.
And what better way to resist the ever-increasing stream of mediocrity and nonsense on the Internet and stick it to the greedy monsters of the “attention economy” than to pick up a work of fiction (ideally not purchased on the platform of these giants), which has no goal other than mere enjoyment and enriching our lives? But although the situation has begun to change, we are not there yet on the reading front, if we are even going to get there.
Two-fifths of Britons said last year that they had not read a book in the last 12 months, According to YouGovAnd, as has been seen many times before on both sides of the Atlantic, men are reading the least – only 53 percent had read a book over the past year, compared to 66 percent of women – in overall numbers and especially when it comes to fiction,
Still pointing to it, and moaning “The disappearance of literary men”Has become somewhat controversial. A much-discussed Vox article last year asked: “Are men’s reading habits really a national crisis?” suggesting that they were not and pointing out that women read an average of seven minutes more fiction per day than men (while failing to note that this itself represents approximately 60 percent more reading time).
Meanwhile a Unheard Op-Ed Last year it was argued that “the literary man is not dead”, believing that a subculture of male literary enthusiasts exists that keeps the ideal alive and claiming that “podcasts are the new salons”.
That’s all well and good, but the truth is that there is a gender gap between men and women when it comes to engaging with reading and especially fiction, and it is growing.
according to 2022 survey According to the US National Endowment for the Arts, 27.7 percent of men had read a short story or novel last year, down from 35.1 percent a decade earlier. Women’s fiction reading habits have also declined, but more slowly and by a higher level: from 54.6 percent to 46.9 percent, meaning that while women outnumbered men in fiction reading in 2012 by 55 percent, in 2022 they increased by nearly 70 percent.
The divide is already clear in young adulthood, and it has grown even further: data from 2025 Showed that girls in England have achieved A-levels in English Literature at almost four times the rate of boys, a gap that has widened to almost three times the rate just eight years ago.
So the next question is: should we care and if so, why? Those who argue that yes, we should do this offer a few reasons. They explain that reading fiction promotes critical thinking, empathy, and improves “Emotional Vocabulary“. He argues that the novels often contain strong, virtuous representations of heroic individuality and masculinity that can be Inspire and inspire modern menThey cite male toxicity veteran Andrew Tate, who once said that “reading books is for losers who are afraid to learn from life”, and that “books are a complete waste of time”, as examples of advice from No To follow.
I agree with all this – wholeheartedly, I might add. But I’m not sure how many of us, women or men, are picking up books to become more virtuous human beings. Perhaps the more compelling, or at least inspiring, reason for reading fiction is simply that it provides a type of pleasure and focus that the modern world is increasingly losing. In a hyper-capitalist culture optimized for skimming and distraction, the ability to sit quietly with a novel is both subversive and actually gratifying. So then, the real question is why so many men aren’t choosing one.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
