The Sixteen Minutes

The 2025 American Time Use Survey, released this June by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is full of quiet surprises about how the country spends its days. But one number stands out as genuinely alarming: Americans now read for leisure just 0.27 hours, or sixteen minutes, a day.

Among young adults, the picture is bleaker still. Those between the ages of 20 and 24 spend an average of just 0.10 hours reading each day, or roughly six minutes. But the average itself tells only part of the story. The more likely reality is not that everyone reads six minutes a day; it's that a large and growing share of people don't read at all, while a relatively small group of devoted readers accounts for most of the reading, pulling the average upward.

On any given day, Americans spend roughly ten times as many hours in front of the television as they do with a book. Reading's share of leisure time has slipped steadily over the past decade, from 6.3% to 5.2%, a slow erosion that shows no sign of reversing. The survey estimates the average leisure time to be five hours a day.

What does it mean? No one can say for certain. But it's not hard to draw a line from all this to some of our more troubling trends: sharpening political polarization, fraying attention spans, worsening mental health.

The survey doesn't even break out social media as its own category, which leaves you wondering how much worse the full accounting would look.

One potential point of nuance is that respondents may have had different personal definitions of reading, such as whether news articles counted, or only novels, which may have pushed the numbers downward. But even generously interpreted, the trend is hard to wave away. Americans are reading less than they used to, and it's worth asking what we lose along the way.

Trump Eyes Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain Nuclear Site

Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La – Pickaxe Mountain – is a nuclear-related site 30km northwest of Natanz, Iran. Construction began on the complex in 2020 and it is not yet believed to be ​operational.

President Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified underground site believed to be linked to Iran’s clandestine nuclear program.

Located around 200km south of Tehran beside the Natanz nuclear complex, the facility features four reinforced tunnel entrances and ventilation shafts leading to a network thought to lie more than 100 metres beneath the surface.

Construction began in 2020 and is still ongoing, with the site not believed to be operational yet.

Trump’s threats come amid rising tensions as Washington and Tehran continue to trade blows across the Gulf.