The impact of BookTok

Today is the day we celebrate reading! Each year, National Read Day Across America (also known as Dr. Seuss Day because of his birthday) is celebrated on March 2nd, a tradition that started in 1998. This day is used to encourage children to read by implementing reading activities in schools. As a book lover, I love that there's a whole day dedicated to reading and we should talk about the online phenomenon that has been motivating teenagers and young adults to dive back into reading as they did when they were younger: #BookTok.

As you may know, TikTok is a fastly growing and popular social media app that has everyone in a chokehold. TikTok has multiple, specific niches that the algorithm determines; one of them being BookTok. In my young teenage years, I used to devour a book per day, but once I got into high school and then eventually college, my duties grew bigger and my time became almost nonexistent. So, reading went really far down on my priority list. That is until I encountered this side of TikTok.

Suddenly, book recommendations were coming up on my For You Page, single phrases from a book that caught my attention, character descriptions, reenactions of certain book scenes, reaction videos to certain chapters, and even books divided into different tropes. Surely my curiosity and my FOMO could not stand it anymore. I wanted back in!

I fell down the rabbit hole of reading and it feels so silly to say that it's all because of a fun little app whose primary purpose, I believe, was never to encourage such a healthy and fun habit in its users.

It's amusing to see how social media can have this impact on people. Older generations have this idea that our generation and younger ones have become lazy, iPad kids, or social media addicts. But, of course, social media has its benefits and it's interesting the way in which BookTok has been having this effect on us and getting a lot of us back into reading.

I hope this gives you something to think about on National Read Day Across America Day and I invite you to grab a book, even if it's a small one, and enjoy reading just like all the children in America are probably doing today too. Happy reading!