Alix Earle, a 25-year-old influencer with nearly nine million TikTok followers, has revealed she has never read a book, sparking a heated online debate. The confession came during an Instagram Q&A, where she said, 'I've never read a book,' while doing her makeup and fiddling with a straw.
Earle, known for her 'get ready with me' videos and her Netflix reality show Earle Meets World, has an estimated net worth of around £15 million ($20 million). Despite her success, the admission drew immediate criticism from some followers, with comments calling it 'so embarrassing' and 'not ditsy and cute.'
Academic defends the influencer
Dr Alison Taft, course director for English and Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University, argues that slating Earle for not reading is going too far. 'There's always seems to be a reason to trash a woman on the internet,' she told Metro. 'We are all snobs, in some respect, we might judge people who don't read or people who don't read the same stories as us.'
Taft, who teaches a module called Adaptation about different ways we consume stories, notes that people consume stories daily through news articles, Netflix series, or podcasts. 'With Shakespeare it was always a performance art,' she added. 'The novel is only a fraction of time in storytelling. I don't have a big problem with people not reading stories. As long as we're consuming stories, which is how we learn about the world.'
Literacy crisis and record book sales
The debate comes amid concerns about literacy. Approximately 6.6 million adults aged 16 to 65 in England have 'very poor' literacy skills, and the Literacy Trust told Metro that the number of children and young people who enjoy reading hit a 20-year low in 2025, with just 32.7% wanting to pick up a book. More than 750,000 UK schoolchildren do not have a single book of their own.
However, Taft points out that reading is not the only way to engage with stories. 'I'm worried we're all at risk of being turned into these non-thinking, non-feeling people, so the ability to imagine and the book opening the door to this ability to empathise, is important,' she said.
Despite the concerns, book sales are at record highs. Publishing reached its highest ever revenue in 2025, with fiction sales increasing by 8%, according to the Publishers Association. Celebrity book clubs like Dua Lipa's Service 95 and Reese Witherspoon's Reese's Book Club have made reading fashionable, while the #BookTok community on TikTok has 86.3 million posts.
Reading reclaimed by young people
Taft believes reading is being reclaimed among young people. 'The radicalness of it has brought it back into fashion,' she explained. 'It's definitely being reclaimed among young people looking to hone their critical thinking and have an appreciation of language. It will never go out of fashion, even though there are all these competing demands.'
On whether Earle's admission is detrimental to others, Taft concluded: 'Not everybody reads, not everybody gets involved in politics – we could be these perfect versions of ourselves, but we aren't. It's not a path I'd chose for myself, but I wouldn't judge her.'
