The stats are quite grim. The latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans had read a book—just one—in the year prior. It gets even worse when you zoom in on Gen Z specifically. Last year, the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup 2025 Voices of Gen Z study reported that 35% of Gen Z K–12 students say they dislike reading, and less than half claim they rarely or never read for fun. You could blame a range of culprits for the country’s dwindling reading rates: the detrimental impact that increased social media usage has had on our collective attention spans…or maybe AI tools’ ability to feed students brief summaries of iconic texts. But the heroes who could relieve the country of this crisis might have just arrived in an unlikely form: Twitch streamers.

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Last week, after a months-long hiatus, Kai Cenat, Twitch’s prodigal son, returned. And his comeback content was markedly different from what made him the biggest name in streaming. Because today, Kai claims he’s moved past the days of 30-day streaming marathons and pretending to blow a room up on fire with Mr. Beast (a real thing that happened). Instead, the #1 streamer on earth is now using his platform to read.

Widely circulated clips show Kai diving into self-help books and reading them aloud with a 20-minute timer set. He doesn’t pronounce everything correctly, and he takes breaks to look up words he doesn’t understand, but he captures those imperfect parts of the process on camera as well. “To be honest, I wanted to articulate myself better,” the 24-year-old said of his reading journey. “I noticed that when I got into arguments, and I had to get a point across, people were not taking me seriously at all. I would have anxiety build up, and I would stutter my words, and not know what happened.” His vulnerable, honest reading journey has earned him praise online, and the artist Doechii even offered some helpful guidance: “Try some Toni Morrison books,” she recommended. “That’s expanded my vocabulary, my descriptiveness, and just softened my heart a bit. She pulls out words you’ve never heard of and uses them in ways you couldn’t imagine.”

As you might expect, when the world’s most popular streamer starts doing something, others follow. Clips of Rakai, Kai’s frequent collaborator, hosting live readings have emerged. Another longtime bookstreamer, @Safiverse, celebrated the attention Kai’s newest content has brought to the subgenre: “I’ve been reading bedtime stories to my viewers recently & I was feeling isolated in that bc I didn’t see anyone else do it,” she shared. “The fact that reading books on stream has become a viral topic bc of [Kai Cenat] is really SO cool.” Could the success of certain creators’ bookstreaming efforts encourage other social media users to do the same, or perhaps read more off-camera? Let’s unpack it.

Could Bookstreaming Influence People to Read?

Many members of Kai’s primarily Gen Z/Gen Alpha audience have acknowledged that his content has inspired them to pick up a book of their own. (“[I] gotta be books-maxxing like Kai cenat,” said one Reddit user.) This influence is due in part to the psychological concept of “body doubling,” often cited as a productivity strategy for those with ADHD. The theory suggests that people work (or read) better when someone else is doing the same alongside them.

Dr. Hezekiah Herrera, a K–12 education specialist and special education educator, tells Cosmopolitan this concept explains why bookstreaming might yield more regular, engaged readers. “Reading can be an isolating experience for many young people [but] when students study together in a library setting, they create a social sense of ‘togetherness,’” he notes. “Digital book streams provide that same social element and allow for readers to participate socially while creating a reduced barrier to entry to reading.”

And watching someone’s reading obstacles can be just as influential. “In addition to the visual element of [Kai] reading live, he struggles and pauses,[inviting] his audience to allow themselves the ability to do so as well,” Dr. Herrera says. “This allows his audience to realize that there is no expectation to be perfect at reading; all that is expected is that you participate and show up.”

Are There Copyright Issues Involved?

Technically, yes, as hopeful as this trend might be. Certain books are copyrighted content, meaning reading them out loud online could be considered infringement (as could remixing songs on TikTok, making fan edits for movies or TV shows, and other common internet practices). So any concerns that well-intentioned bookstreamers could be subject to the beast that is copyright law are valid: rights holders can technically sue creators who host read-alongs with their work. That said, there are plenty of classic books in the public domain that are fully cleared for bookstreaming.

What Books Are OK to Bookstream?

Here are some works whose copyrights have expired and are therefore cleared for public readings. Just in case you’re considering venturing into the bookstreaming-verse, or if you happen to be Kai Cenat and are looking for your next great text to tackle:

The rise of bookstreaming is promising, particularly in the wake of nonstop headlines about young people’s inability to read books fully—if at all. And perhaps it’s kismet that the works most readily cleared for influential bookstreaming are the classic texts that helped shape nearly every modern author’s appreciation for story structure and world-building, long before AI tools were available to provide artificial assistance.

We’ll have to wait and see whether this trend has any measurable impact on reading rates, but even if it doesn’t, it’s a wholesome deviation from the live video game playing and prank wars that have defined the streaming economy thus far. Shoutout to the bookstreamers. Long may they reign.