How fiction book reading supports wellbeing during the teenage years

There is growing interest in the potential for book reading to support children and young people’s wellbeing, with recent evidence to suggest a relationship between the two (e.g., Kennewell et al., 2022(this link will open in a new window); Sun et al., 2023(this link will open in a new window)). In our recent research project, Reading and Wellbeing(this link will open in a new window), funded by the Leverhulme Trust, researchers from the Literacy Lab(this link will open in a new window) at the University of Edinburgh, alongside Scottish Book Trust and National Literacy Trust, sought to understand teenagers’ perspectives about how reading fiction books has supported their wellbeing. Examining three dimensions of wellbeing – positive emotions, connection and personal growth – we centre their voices and share key insights which provide depth of understanding into teenagers’ reading practices, and experiences, and the diverse ways in which fiction books can, and do, support their wellbeing. 

Positive emotions

For teenagers, reading books can elicit a wide range of emotional experiences, for example, feelings of enjoyment, relaxation, interest, hope, comfort, or escapism, with intensity of emotions varying across readers and across books. However, in addition to books eliciting emotions, teenagers also reported needing to be in the right emotional state to even read in the first place:

'Usually just reading in general for me, just it’s peaceful. It’s a way for me to just calm down and just get away from the world.' – Male, aged 16

'Now that I think about it just brings me like a huge sense of nostalgia because I read it so much when I was younger.' – Female, aged 16

'I’ve read a few books as well that that have like left me crying in tears, like, I’m not even kidding. But it’s amazing.' – Female, aged 17

'Especially if I have a lot of things going on, it’s more difficult to actually pick up a book and want to read because my brain won’t settle down.' – Female, aged 16.

Connection

When reading fiction, many teenagers reported feeling connected to fictional characters, settings, and/or story events, particularly when there was a sense of familiarity or shared experience. Furthermore, some teenagers spoke about feeling more connected to others in their own life, through reading and sharing books:

'But the characters, they just stick with me after I finished reading it, I get like, really attached to the characters.' – Female, aged 16

'One of my favourite books. . . There’s a little bit of humility and things going wrong, I think that really helps people to connect to the characters, because we’ve all felt anger or frustration at times.' – Male, aged 15

'I remember my friend gave me a book because she mentioned it and it had kind of like, issues I was dealing with at the time and she was like, you should read this book.' – Female, aged 16

Personal growth

Reading fiction books can also support teenagers’ academic, intellectual, social and emotional development, and teenagers shared different examples of how book reading had supported their personal development, empathy, understanding of others, and improved their skills and knowledge:

'Through [character] I can see that it is OK to not be perfect because it will always be OK, like, it will all be alright, there’s no like, pressure to be perfect because you don’t have to be.' – Female, aged 16

'They’ll have, like, a character they they’re going through quite a lot, but they never talk about it. It’s always like an internal monologue. So it makes me think if other people I know, you know, they’re not saying anything, but they’re having troubles, they’re constantly thinking about stuff that is never talked about, you know?' – Male, aged 17

'Even fiction books, just reading about different concepts and topics, it really helps to define what I enjoy and what I want to do in the future.' – Female, aged 15

While book reading has the potential to support teenagers’ wellbeing, concerns are intensifying with regards to the decline in book reading among children and young people (Clark et al., 2025(this link will open in a new window)). Research-informed practices that can support all young people to find and choose books which are personally enjoyable, empowering, and enriching are essential.

You can learn more about the Reading and Wellbeing project here(this link will open in a new window), and the open-access paper related to this research can be found here(this link will open in a new window). If you are interested in research and practice to motivate young people’s book reading, visit The Young People’s Reading Project(this link will open in a new window) webpage and Scottish Book Trust’s Reading Schools programme(this link will open in a new window).