You may have assumed that, with the time children and young people are spending on social media, they would be reading less.
However, it seems that the reverse may be true, as children are reading more thanks to a TikTok niche known as “BookTok”.
The 2023 What Kids Are Reading Report found that the number of books read by children last year increased by 24 per cent, compared to the previous academic year.
The research found that social media trends and challenges, including BookTok, encouraged children to read popular books, like Alice Osman’s series Heartstopper.
Joan Mill, group managing director at Renaissance International, which published the report, explained: “Also of note, compared to previous years, is the emergence of authors such as Alice Oseman — a prominent star of BookTok — alongside established favourites like Julia Donaldson and Jeff Kinney.
“Maybe the reading role models [mentioned in the report’s foreword] are as likely to be found on platforms like BookTok as they are in school or the community at large — food for thought!”
The hashtag #BookTok has 130 billion views on TikTok, and variations like #BookTokChallenge and #BookTokClub have also amassed hundreds of millions of views.
BookTok clearly appeals to children and young people, too: the hashtag #YABooks, dedicated to young adult fiction, has two billion views, and #KidsBooks has nearly 200 million views.
Readers are using TikTok to review the books they’ve read and to make recommendations to their viewers.
Some young adult books popular with TikTok creators include Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series and Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy, which have been adapted into a Netflix TV show and films series, respectively.
The report also found that favourite authors among primary schoolchildren are Jeff Kinney and David Walliams, while secondary school children like Kinney, Walliams, and Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
Among students in years nine, 10, and 11, Colleen Hoover was top of the list with It Ends with Us, which is an incredibly popular, if controversial, book on TikTok.
#ItEndsWithUs has more than two billion views on TikTok, while #ColleenHoover has nearly four billion views. The author herself has 1.4 million followers.
Hoover and Oseman were also both cited as favourite authors among secondary school students.
