Conventional wisdom says Gen Z can’t focus anymore. Our brains have been changed forever by social media. We only consume information in bite-sized pieces, dumbed down and served up in 15-second chunks.
Books? Don’t even get us started. A former Georgetown University English department chair complains that Gen Z “struggles to stay focused for the length of a sonnet.”
But what’s the real story?
In 2025, book sales of Wuthering Heights more than doubled. A fifth-grader in the Los Angeles Times says she chooses Jane Austen over her phone, adding that she loves “old-fashioned stories.” On TikTok, the hashtag #JaneAusten has garnered over 200 million views. Gen Z is even streaming themselves reading, like famous streamer Kai Cenat, and making it go viral.
The answer is: Gen Z doesn’t have a focus issue. We have a permission problem.
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Get notified of top trending articles like this one every week! (we won't spam you)Gen Z Is Reading Books Again
Walt Hunter, a professor of English at Case Western, took a risk. He gave his students (mostly science majors) challenging books to read. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
Cather’s My Ántonia. Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Thirty-two novels were assigned in one semester.
Professor Hunter took away all the easy outs. No take-home essays to leverage AI and get help from. Instead, in-class “flash essays” were given, in which students had to write without notes, AI, or even books.
What happened? “The students were reading,” Hunter said. “They were reading everything, or most of it.”
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A similar class is given by Professor Justin McDaniel at the University of Pennsylvania. His “Existential Despair” course has students tackle entire books during seven hours of silence, then they discuss them in a darkened room. Why does this work?
McDaniel is blunt: Young people “can’t do it on their own” and “need a spotter” to help push back against the siren song of scrolling and texting. A Wharton grad said he’d be lucky if he read one book every four years before the class put him into a nightly cadence of reading chapters.
That’s what these professors get. They aren’t teaching students how to concentrate better — they’re giving them permission to ignore the noise. Permission to ignore their phone.
Permission to disappoint the algorithm. Permission not to be productive, monetizable, or useful for a few hours. Permission simply to read.
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Gen Z Reading Habits: From TikTok to Wuthering Heights
Reading has become a group activity. Gen Z readers are attending read-ins of Wuthering Heights, discussing it in book clubs or group chats, and sharing their reactions on social media. One Tiktoker said, “74 pages into Wuthering Heights and why did nobody tell me that reading this is like eavesdropping on the most unhinged gossip you’ve ever heard?”
Young people are also putting real money into finding ways to carve out a space in which to read. Reading travel is having its moment; reading retreats are on the rise, and 91% of travelers say they are curious about reading-based travel. Vrbo reviews mentioning reading terms rose 285% year over year, and Mackenzie Newcomb’s Bad B**** Book Club leads monthly reading trips that cost between $900 and $1,500. What are people paying for? Relaxation and a nice view. Where are they going? Door County, WI, Maine, or The Berkshires. Anywhere that is not stimulated and is at a quiet distance from the noise.
Twitch live-streaming sensation Kai Cenat launched a book-streaming phenomenon by reading self-help books to his online audience. His motivation? “I wanted to articulate myself better. I noticed that when I got into arguments, and I had to get a point across, people were not taking me seriously at all.” Watching Kai read seems to motivate readers to crack open books.
We’re not a generation incapable of concentrating, but one seeking depth and meaning, and what we need is room to pursue it.
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The Attention Economy vs. Gen Z Readers
We grew up in an environment designed to make deep focus nearly impossible. Every app on our phones has been lovingly tweaked by software developers and psychologists to be as addictive as possible. Feeds are designed to keep our attention, distractions are designed to interrupt our flow, and every notification is a bid to convert our attention into real-time cash.
The literacy dip is not because we have faulty brains — it’s because the attention economy is working exactly as designed. Less than half of Americans report reading at least one book in the last year. Thirty-five percent of kids in grades K-12 report not enjoying reading at all.
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Gen Z Reading Trends in 2025
But what the data really shows is that Gen Z kids are reading more than everyone thinks. We’re spending $900 on reading retreats. We’re making 19th-century novels go viral. We’re waiting in line for hours to meet authors, even when reading has reached a 10-year low for the country.
In Brazil, novelist Raphael Montes has sold a million copies across his eight books, yet 53% of Brazilians profess they have not even opened a book in the past three months. Montes's “gore-soaped darkfics” resonate with young adult readers who see themselves in his protagonists, who don’t think about consequences or moral constraints. Film and literary scholar Sergio Mota explains, “People believe fiction is a waste of time, that they have nothing to learn from it.” But clearly not when it comes to Montes.
Perhaps that’s the answer. We’re attempting to redefine what we like in books in a world that’s all too willing to turn us into numbers, metrics, and data sets. We’re not asking for easier books or shorter attention sound bites. We’re asking for time, space, and permission to get our attention back.
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Can Gen Z Focus? The Data Says Yes
The facts are clear. Gen Z can absolutely digest full-length books. We just need the structure and the permission.
The question is whether we have the guts to create the space that we need. Are we strong enough to be in environments without phones? Are we willing to pick up challenging books without apology? Are we just as vigilant in our attention as we are in everything else?
