[A stack of books in a public library — a scene few people expected would matter to Gen Z again, until a video app decided otherwise. Photo Credit: Pixabay] 

Gen Z is reading more than any other generation in America right now. 

A 2025 Cambridge University Press study found that 66 percent of Gen Z nowidentifies as readers, up 14 percentage points from 2022.

The same study also reported that 65 percent of Gen Z read at least one print book in the past year, an increase from 59 percent in 2022.

The research, led by publishing scholars Rachel Noorda and Kathi Inman Berens, drew on two nationally representative U.S. surveys.

When asked to explain their reasons, the majority of respondents pointed straight to TikTok. 

A UK Publishers Association poll of more than 2,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25 found that 59 percent said "BookTok" helped them find a passion for reading.

Another 68 percent said BookTok pushed them to read a book they otherwise would not have picked up.

The books tagged #BookTok on the app have now been watched more than 190 billion times. 

The effect has spilled over into the U.S. book industry. 

Total American book sales rose 6.5 percent in 2024, hitting $14.18 billion, according to the  Association of American Publishers.

Bookstores are opening again. 

Barnes & Noble opened 57 new stores in 2024 and plans to open more than 60 more in 2025.

CEO James Daunt attributed the chain's revival to empowering local booksellers and stocking shelves closer to what readers are actually asking for.

Authors like Colleen Hoover, Sarah J. Maas, and Emily Henry have become almost permanent  fixtures on The New York Times bestseller list, often for books BookTok pulled out of years-old print runs. 

None of this looked likely a decade ago. 

Back then, reading rates among American teens were falling every year, and researchers were  writing off young readers as a lost cause. 

That narrative flipped, and a video app did what a decade of school reading programs could not. Not everyone is happy about it, though. 

Media researchers Gitte Balling and Marianne Martens, writing in the academic journal Convergence in 2024, have argued that BookTok has narrowed what people read as much as it has grown its audience.

A significant share of the app's most-recommended titles fall into a single subgenre called "romantasy," a mix of romance and fantasy that Balling and Martens argue increasingly follows the same script.

Their research revealed that the platform's viral cycle has pressured publishers into faster release schedules and encouraged a growing sameness in plot, cover, and marketing across romantasy titles.

Some school librarians have also expressed age-related concerns, since several of BookTok’s biggest series, including Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, contain explicit content that has  been pulled from certain high school library shelves. 

Defenders of the trend push back, pointing out that formula has always been part of reading culture, and that  adults tend to underestimate how much “guilty pleasure” fiction matters, especially for readers  who are only just getting back into the habit. 

The one thing almost no one contests is the basic number: Gen Z now reads more than the two  generations directly above it. 

Whether BookTok pushes readers toward a wider range of books, or keeps them locked in the  same lane, is now one of the bigger open questions in American publishing.