“Know that the French only read two minutes a day!” exclaimed Alba Ventura, RTL editorialist, in the morning of January 29, referring to a “catastrophic” situation. France would thus arrive far behind Estonia, which, with its thirteen minutes of daily reading, is the European champion. Then come Finland, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Austria, Italy… and , finally, France, last in this ranking taken from a survey relayed by Eurostat and carried out between 2008 and 2015. Two minutes a day in the country of Voltaire, Balzac and Molière, that is surprising! Especially since, in its biannual barometer of 2023, the National Book Center (CNL) indicated that the time spent by the French reading books was… forty-one minutes per day. So how can we explain such a gap?
“This Eurostat survey is very old. Furthermore, it only mentions having interviewed a sample of people aged 20 to 74, but we lack more in-depth information on the methodology applied, on the representation in terms of gender , ages, socio-professional categories or even on the questions asked”, says Etienne Mercier, director of the opinion department of Ipsos, which manages the CNL barometer. His hypothesis: as part of this European study, the question on the time they devote to reading would have been asked of all French people without distinction. “While the forty-one minutes mentioned in our own survey only concerns people who read [NDLR : d’après l’enquête du CNL, 86 % des Français se déclarent spontanément lecteurs]”, he explains.
Another major potential difference is that the CNL takes into account, in its calculations, all media (paper, computer, tablet, smartphone) and all types of reading (novels, practical books, lifestyle, leisure, comics) . “On the other hand, we ignore what the people interviewed read, whether in the professional context or at school,” explains Etienne Mercier.
The latter, while saying he is very surprised by these “very low” figures of two minutes per day, recognizes that French studies agree on the same trend: the erosion of the practice of reading in our country. These are the conclusions of the latest report on the cultural practices of the French, piloted by the Ministry of Culture, and carried out throughout 2018. “After a significant increase during the 1970s and 1980s, the practice of reading of books (excluding comics) declines from the 1990s”, it is written. In 2018, 62% of those aged 15 and over read at least one book during the year… That is, 11 points less than in 1988; this is the lowest level observed since the beginning of the 1970s. Avid readers are also becoming rarer: from 28% in 1973, their share among those aged 15 and over is now lower – 14 and 15% respectively. in 2008 and 2018. “As for heavy readers, we notice that the trend is no longer downward over the last decade. This stabilization suggests that we have reached a sort of robust base below which we will not come down”, puts sociologist Claude Poissenot, author of Sociology of reading (Armand Colin, 2019).
“41% of 15-19 year olds are non-readers”
The situation would be particularly worrying among young people. Especially with regard to 15-19 year olds who declare themselves to be non-readers. “In this age group, 17% said they had not read any books (except comics) over the last twelve months in 1988, compared to 41% in 2018. This is where the downward trend is most obvious” , continues Claude Poisenot. Note that young readers have different habits from their elders. According to the latest CNL barometer, 52% of those under 25 have already used the digital format (+15 points compared to 2021), compared to 29% of the rest of the population. And 46% of those under 35 have already listened to audiobooks, while the average percentage is 30%. However, the report on the cultural practices of the French in 2018 is clear and clearly states that “for occasional reading as for diligent reading, the dropout increases from generations born after 1975, with a historically low proportion of readers for the most recent generations.
But what books are we talking about in all these studies devoted to the habits of the French? The debate rages between those who only take into account literature and the great classics and those who believe that the practice of reading must be measured in a much broader way. The CNL survey carried out by the Ipsos institute made the latter choice. “We tend to forget that reading is not limited to Racine, Stendhal or Flaubert. Comics or manga are also books in their own right, and there is no reason to overlook cooking works or DIY”, estimates Etienne Mercier, who insists on the fact that the book and publishing sector is doing well in France. According to an Ipsos survey dated 2022, giving books at Christmas is also considered a cultural exception since 4 out of 10 French people turn to this type of gift. While the average elsewhere oscillates between 16% (in the United States) and 35% (in Spain). In addition, our country, with its 3,500 independent bookstores, can boast of having one of the densest networks in the world.
According to the CNL, practical works devoted to the arts of living or leisure are very popular, since 56% of readers (+ 7 points since 2021) have turned to them over the past year, while 48 % of them favor history books (+3 points). 38% of readers have immersed themselves in classic or foreign literary works. The biggest increase concerns comics: 48% of readers are fond of them, up 14 points. Knowing that, this time, all age groups are affected by this craze. “In France, we tend to overestimate the weight of novels compared to other more unifying forms of reading, such as comics,” estimates Claude Poissenot, recalling that the last Goncourt Prize, Watch over her, by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, sold more than 450,000 copies, while The white Iris, the last Asterix, is more than 1.6 million.
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