Younger Americans and Public Libraries

Younger Americans -- those ages 16-29 -- especially fascinate researchers and organizations because of their advanced technology habits, their racial and ethnic diversity, their looser relationships to institutions such as political parties and organized religion, and the ways in which their social attitudes differ from their elders. This report pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials, a key stakeholder group affecting the future of communities, libraries, book publishers and media makers of all kinds, as well as the tone of the broader culture.

Following are some of the noteworthy insights from this research.

• There are actually three different “generations” of younger Americans with distinct book reading habits, library usage patterns, and attitudes about libraries.
• Millennials’ lives are full of technology, but they are more likely than their elders to say that important information is not available on the Internet.
• Millennials are quite similar to their elders when it comes to the amount of book reading they do, but young adults are more likely to have read a book in the past 12 months.
• The community and general media-use activities of younger adults are different from older adults.
• As a group, Millennials are as likely as older adults to have used a library in the past 12 months, and more likely to have used a library website.
• As with the general population, most younger Americans know where their local library is, but many say they are unfamiliar with all the services it may offer.