Lydia Wistisen: Children’s reading practice is being buried under an avalanche of audiobooks

My five-year-old daughter has consumed an enormous number of audiobooks this summer. She listened at breakfast, while brushing her teeth, while drawing or doing crafts, in the hammock and on the beach, during long car journeys and as she fell asleep after a live bedtime story. Since she also listened while I read printed novels, I happily lent her my phone, enjoying a rare luxury for parents of young children on holiday.

Back at work, with the Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s new report, “Reading on Unequal Terms,” in front of me, that summer indulgence feels less harmless. The report examines how Swedish pupils’ conditions for reading have changed over the past 20 years. It starts from a troubling fact: nearly one in five pupils in fourth grade lacks basic reading comprehension.

One section looks at how children and their guardians read in their spare time. Adults and children alike read less today. They have fewer books at home, visit libraries less often and talk less about what books contain. My daughter cannot read independently yet, but her audiobook habit probably contributes to this development. We have never even touched one of the books in the “Knyckertz Family” series, despite them being her favorites.

Research shows that children’s audiobook consumption has risen sharply in recent years. The 2022 report “Children’s Literary Currents,” by Karl Berglund and Ann Steiner, points to mobile phones as one explanation. Books can now be heard almost anywhere. Yet listening itself is hardly new. Children have consumed audiobooks since the start of the 20th century, through 78-rpm records, vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs. Writers and artists including Gösta Knutsson, Thomas Funck and Lennart Hellsing helped drive the medium’s development with Sveriges Radio. Stories about Pelle Svanslös and Grodan Boll were originally written for radio. The recorded children’s book gained its major breakthrough in the 1970s, and recordings of Rune Andréasson’s “Bamse, the World’s Strongest Bear” still play on audiobook apps and music streaming services. The difference now is the scale and convenience of listening, which makes the phone harder to put down.

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When you hear this signal, then you know it is time to turn the page.