47.3% of UK children and young people aged 8 to 18 listened to audiobooks, podcasts or both in 2026, according to the National Literacy Trust’s survey of 110,114 children and young people. In the US, 46% of children aged 6 to 12 have listened to a podcast at least once (Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023), and among US children aged 3 to 12 who use a voice assistant, 52% use it to play music at least once a day (Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024). The hardware is following the habit: revenue at tonies SE, maker of the screen-free Toniebox audio player, grew 31% to EUR 630.3 million in 2025 (FY2025 results). This roundup covers the listening side of childhood media, the counterpart to our children’s screen time statistics. We aggregated data from Common Sense Media, Edison Research, Germany’s mpfs KIM study, the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, the Audio Publishers Association, and peer-reviewed studies in Review of Educational Research, Developmental Science and Brain Connectivity.
TL;DR
- 47.3% of UK 8-to-18-year-olds listened to audiobooks, podcasts or both in 2026 (National Literacy Trust, Children and Young People’s Audio Listening in 2026).
- 46% of US children aged 6 to 12 have ever listened to a podcast, and 29% listened in the last month (Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023).
- Only 11% of US children aged 0 to 8 have ever listened to a podcast, against 34% who listen to audiobooks at least occasionally (Common Sense Media, 2025 Census).
- 53% of German children aged 6 to 13 listen to audiobooks or radio plays at least occasionally, but only 22% listen to podcasts (mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024).
- 52% of US children aged 3 to 12 who use voice assistants play music through them at least once a day (Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024).
- EUR 630.3 million: 2025 revenue of the Toniebox maker, up 31% year over year (tonies SE, FY2025 results).
- US audiobook sales reached $2.43 billion in 2025, up 9% (Audio Publishers Association, 2026 Sales Survey).
- g = 0.07, p = .23: no reliable comprehension gap between reading and listening across 46 studies (Clinton-Lisell, Review of Educational Research 2022).
- 314 third and fourth graders took part in an 8-week audiobook trial that supported vocabulary learning (MIT study, Developmental Science 2026).
- Preschoolers understood audio stories as well as illustrated ones, and animated stories less well, p < 0.05 (Hutton et al., Brain Connectivity 2019).
1. How Many Children Listen: Podcast and Audiobook Reach
The headline number depends on the yardstick. “Ever listened” captures curiosity, “last month” captures habit, and the gap between the two is where the children’s audio market lives. In the US, roughly 46% of 6-to-12-year-olds have tried a podcast but only 29% listened in the past month, which means only about 63% of children who sample the format (29 divided by 46) were still listening in a given month.
Age and format matter even more than country. Among children under 9, podcasts remain marginal while audiobooks reach about a third of kids; in Germany, the classic children’s radio play (in German “Hörspiel”: a scripted audio drama for children) still outdraws podcasts by more than two to one. For UK teenagers and pre-teens, by contrast, audio listening is now a near-majority behaviour.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK children and young people aged 8 to 18 who listened to audiobooks, podcasts or both | 47.3% (2026) | National Literacy Trust, Children and Young People’s Audio Listening in 2026 |
| US children aged 6 to 12 who have ever listened to a podcast | 46% | Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 |
| US children aged 6 to 12 who listened to a podcast in the last month | 29% | Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 |
| US children aged 0 to 8 who have ever listened to a podcast | 11% | Common Sense Media, The 2025 Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight |
| US children aged 0 to 8 who listen to audiobooks at least occasionally | 34% | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| German children aged 6 to 13 who listen to audiobooks or radio plays at least occasionally | 53% | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| German children aged 6 to 13 who listen to audiobooks or radio plays at least once a week | 31% | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| German children aged 6 to 13 who listen to podcasts at least occasionally, 2024 vs 2022 | 22% vs 24% | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
Most recent available data: Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report, 2023 (survey of 1,272 US parents of children aged 6 to 12 in June 2023). No newer US edition dedicated to child podcast listening was found. The four surveys also use different age bands and question wording, so compare directions, not decimals.
2. Listening Time, Routines and Co-Listening
Audio is a long-session medium for young children. Among the youngest US children who listened to a podcast, average time reached 59 minutes a day, longer than the typical audiobook session. The likely reason is context: audio fills car journeys, quiet time and bedtime, slots where a screen is either impractical or unwelcome.
The more distinctive finding is how social children’s listening is. Co-listening (a parent listening along with the child, not just pressing play) is the norm rather than the exception, from toddler audiobooks to podcasts for primary-school children. In UK families who listen to audiobooks together, two in three do so at bedtime, which positions audio as a modern extension of the read-aloud ritual rather than a replacement for it.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average audiobook listening time among US children aged 0 to 8 who listened that day | 44 minutes | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| Average daily podcast listening time among US children aged 0 to 8 who listen to podcasts at least occasionally | 59 minutes | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| US parents of children aged 0 to 8 who co-listen at least some of the time: audiobooks vs podcasts | 65% vs 61% | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| US monthly child podcast listeners aged 6 to 12 who listen nearly every day | 25% | Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 |
| US monthly child podcast listeners aged 6 to 12 who listen with a parent vs with a sibling | 68% vs 54% | Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 |
| UK children aged 0 to 5 who listened to audio stories at home | 60.0% | National Literacy Trust, Audio Stories in the Early Years in 2026 |
| UK households with children aged 5 to 18 where parents and children listen to audiobooks together | 28.5% | National Literacy Trust, Audiobooks in the Home in 2026 |
| UK families who listen to audiobooks together and do so at bedtime | 66.7% | National Literacy Trust, Audiobooks in the Home in 2026 |
Context: the US time figures describe listeners on a given day, not all children, so they cannot be multiplied by the reach figures in section 1 to estimate an average for every child. The UK early-years survey covered 3,194 parents and carers; the home-listening survey covered 3,000 parents of children aged 5 to 18.
3. Smart Speakers and Voice Assistants in Children’s Listening
Smart speakers turned audio into something a pre-reader can request by voice, without a screen or a parent’s phone. In US homes with young children, ownership has risen from about four in ten in 2020 to roughly half, and among children who already use voice assistants, more than one in three has a smart speaker of their own. For these children, music and stories are the daily use case, well ahead of homework.
Parents are adopting the devices and worrying about them at the same time. Over 40% of parents whose children use voice assistants are very or extremely concerned about data privacy, exposure to strangers, surveillance and advertising. Accuracy is a second, quieter issue: voice systems still struggle more with young voices than with adult ones, as our children’s speech recognition word error rate statistics show, and a living room adds distance and noise on top (see our far-field smart speaker wake word accuracy statistics).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| US households with a child aged 0 to 8 that own a smart speaker, 2024 vs 2020 | 49% vs 41% | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| US children aged 0 to 8 who sometimes or often ask questions using voice assistants | 21% | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| US children aged 3 to 12 who use voice assistants and own their own smart speaker | 36% | Digital Wellness Lab (Boston Children’s Hospital), Pulse Survey on Voice Assistants and Generative AI 2024 |
| Those children who play music through a voice assistant at least once a day | 52% | Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024 |
| Those children who listen to stories through a voice assistant at least once a day | 34% | Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024 |
| Their parents who are very or extremely concerned about each of: data privacy, exposure to strangers, surveillance, advertising | Over 40% | Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024 |
| German households with children aged 6 to 13 that have a voice assistant such as Alexa or Google Assistant | About one third (up 9 percentage points vs 2022) | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| Americans aged 12 and older who own a smart speaker | Estimated 112 million | Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026 |
Context: the voice-assistant survey questioned 1,447 US parents whose child actively uses a voice assistant (December 18, 2023 to January 3, 2024), so its percentages describe users, not all American children. The 112 million estimate covers everyone aged 12 and older, not households with children.
4. Screen-Free Audio Players and the Children’s Audio Market
A whole hardware category now sells the absence of a screen. Dedicated children’s audio players (simple boxes a child controls with figurines, cards or big buttons, with no display) sit in a third of German family homes, and one German child in five aged 6 to 13 owns one personally. The CD player, the previous generation’s version of the same idea, is in retreat.
The commercial scale is visible in company filings. The listed Toniebox maker grew revenue 31% in 2025 and its Toniebox hardware revenue rose 65% in the first half of 2026, while US audiobook sales kept growing, with children’s titles including young adult among the fastest-growing genres in 2025 (Audio Publishers Association, 2026 Sales Survey). The pull is not purely commercial, though: among parents of US children who know podcasts but do not listen, almost half say their child simply prefers to watch, which is the barrier every audio product has to overcome.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| German children aged 6 to 13 who own a dedicated children’s audio player (such as a Toniebox or Hörbert) | One in five | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| German households with children aged 6 to 13 that have a CD player, change vs 2022 | Around half (down 9 percentage points) | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| Toniebox maker group revenue, 2025 | EUR 630.3 million (+31% year over year) | tonies SE, FY2025 results release, April 14, 2026 |
| Tonieboxes activated worldwide (the company’s own claim) | Around 11.8 million | tonies SE, FY2025 results release |
| Toniebox hardware revenue, first half of 2026 | EUR 57.2 million (+65%) | tonies SE H1 2026 results, as reported by Spielwarenmesse |
| US audiobook sales revenue, 2025 | $2.43 billion (+9%) | Audio Publishers Association, 2026 Sales Survey |
| US adult audiobook listeners who name ‘an alternative to screen time’ as a benefit | 70% | Audio Publishers Association, 2026 Consumer Survey |
| US parents of podcast-aware children aged 6 to 12 who have not listened recently and say their child prefers watching content | 48% | Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 |
Outlier note: the revenue figures come from the company’s published financial results, but the activation count is the company’s own figure and uses a different definition from units sold (see the Data watch note in the methodology). The screen-time benefit figure comes from adult audiobook listeners, not from parents specifically.
5. Audio, Literacy and Learning: What the Research Shows
The research case for audio has moved from “it is not cheating” to “it depends on how it is used”. Across 46 controlled comparisons, reading and listening produced statistically indistinguishable comprehension overall, but reading kept an advantage on inferential questions (questions whose answer is implied rather than stated in the text). Adding audio to text helped only when the pace was set for the learner, and a 2026 controlled trial found that poor readers gained vocabulary only when audiobooks were paired with one-on-one scaffolding (MIT study, Developmental Science 2026). Audio is a support for instruction, not a substitute for it.
Motivation is where the survey data are strongest. UK children now say they enjoy listening more than reading, and the gap is widest among boys, whose reading enjoyment trails girls’ by a wide margin. Turning that enjoyment into reading is the open question: more than a third of young listeners say audio got them interested in reading books. For the decoding side of the story, see our science of reading and phonics outcomes statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK 8-to-18-year-olds who enjoy listening vs who enjoy reading, 2024 | 42.3% vs 34.6% | National Literacy Trust, Children and Young People’s Listening in 2024 |
| UK boys aged 8 to 18 who enjoy listening vs who enjoy reading, 2024 | 43.4% vs 28.2% | National Literacy Trust, Listening in 2024 |
| UK 8-to-18-year-olds who say listening has got them interested in reading, 2026 | 36.6% | National Literacy Trust, Audio Listening in 2026 |
| Reading vs listening comprehension across 46 studies (N = 4,687) | g = 0.07, p = .23 (not reliably different) | Clinton-Lisell, Review of Educational Research 2022 |
| Reading advantage over listening on inferential comprehension | g = 0.36, p = .02 | Clinton-Lisell, Review of Educational Research 2022 |
| Reading while listening vs reading only: overall / experimenter-paced / self-paced (30 studies, N = 1,945) | g = .18 / 0.41 / 0.06 | Clinton-Lisell, Educational Research: Theory and Practice 2023 |
| Third and fourth graders in a remote 8-week text-supplemented audiobook trial (mean age 9.47 years) | N = 314 | MIT study, Developmental Science 2026 |
| Preschool story comprehension: audio vs illustrated vs animated format (27 children completed brain scans) | Audio and illustrated equivalent; animated lower (p < 0.05) | Hutton et al., Brain Connectivity 2019 |
Most recent available data for two rows: the reading-versus-listening meta-analysis was published online on December 29, 2021 (print issue 2022), and the preschool brain-imaging study dates from 2019. The effect size g (Hedges’ g) is a standardized difference between two groups, where 0 means no difference. In the audiobook trial, the audiobooks-only group listened for about 90 minutes a week, according to MIT News, April 9, 2026.
Summary: Kids’ Podcast & Children’s Audio Listening by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK 8-to-18-year-olds who listened to audiobooks, podcasts or both, 2026 | 47.3% | National Literacy Trust, Audio Listening in 2026 |
| UK 8-to-18-year-olds who enjoy listening vs who enjoy reading, 2024 | 42.3% vs 34.6% | National Literacy Trust, Listening in 2024 |
| US children aged 6 to 12 who have ever listened to a podcast | 46% | Edison Research, Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 |
| US children aged 0 to 8 who have ever listened to a podcast | 11% | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| US households with a child aged 0 to 8 that own a smart speaker, 2024 vs 2020 | 49% vs 41% | Common Sense Media, 2025 Census |
| German children aged 6 to 13 who listen to audiobooks or radio plays at least occasionally | 53% | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| German children aged 6 to 13 who listen to podcasts at least occasionally, 2024 vs 2022 | 22% vs 24% | mpfs, KIM-Studie 2024 |
| US children aged 3 to 12 who use voice assistants and own their own smart speaker | 36% | Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024 |
| Voice-assistant-using children who play music through it at least daily | 52% | Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024 |
| Voice-assistant-using children who listen to stories through it at least daily | 34% | Digital Wellness Lab, Pulse Survey 2024 |
| Toniebox maker group revenue, 2025 | EUR 630.3 million (+31%) | tonies SE, FY2025 results |
| US audiobook sales revenue, 2025 | $2.43 billion (+9%) | Audio Publishers Association, 2026 Sales Survey |
| US adult audiobook listeners who name ‘an alternative to screen time’ as a benefit | 70% | Audio Publishers Association, 2026 Consumer Survey |
| Reading vs listening comprehension across 46 studies | g = 0.07, p = .23 | Clinton-Lisell, Review of Educational Research 2022 |
| Children in a remote 8-week audiobook vocabulary trial | N = 314 | MIT study, Developmental Science 2026 |
| Preschool comprehension: audio vs illustrated vs animated stories | Audio and illustrated equivalent; animated lower (p < 0.05) | Hutton et al., Brain Connectivity 2019 |
Methodology and Sources
- National Literacy Trust: Children and Young People’s Audio Listening in 2026 (110,114 children and young people aged 8 to 18, added July 27, 2026); Children and Young People’s Listening in 2024; Audio Stories in the Early Years in 2026 (3,194 parents and carers, added October 21, 2026); Audiobooks in the Home in 2026 (3,000 parents and carers of children aged 5 to 18).
- Common Sense Media: The 2025 Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight (1,578 parents of children aged 8 or younger, probability-based online panel fielded August 5 to August 29, 2024; margin of error plus or minus 2.9 percentage points).
- Edison Research: Kids Podcast Listener Report 2023 (1,272 US parents of children aged 6 to 12, June 2023, plus a parent-administered survey of 245 child listeners) and The Infinite Dial 2026 (2,050 people aged 12 and older, January 2026).
- mpfs (Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest): KIM-Studie 2024 (1,225 children aged 6 to 13 and their main caregiver across Germany, face-to-face interviews September 18 to November 7, 2024).
- Digital Wellness Lab, Boston Children’s Hospital: Pulse Survey: Use of Voice Assistants and Generative AI by Children and Families (1,447 US parents of children aged 3 to 12, published February 2024).
- tonies SE: FY2025 results release (April 14, 2026); first-half 2026 figures as reported by Spielwarenmesse.
- Audio Publishers Association: Sales and Consumer Surveys (2026 releases covering 2025 sales and a February 2026 consumer survey of US adults).
- Clinton-Lisell, V.: Listening Ears or Reading Eyes: A Meta-Analysis of Reading and Listening Comprehension Comparisons, Review of Educational Research 92(4), 2022; Does Reading while Listening to Text Improve Comprehension Compared to Reading Only?, Educational Research: Theory and Practice 34(3), 2023.
- MIT study: Remote Text-Supplemented Audiobook Intervention Supports Children’s Explicit and Incidental Vocabulary Learning, Developmental Science 29(3), 2026; summary in MIT News, April 9, 2026.
- Hutton et al.: Functional Connectivity of Attention, Visual, and Language Networks During Audio, Illustrated, and Animated Stories in Preschool-Age Children, Brain Connectivity 9(7), 2019.
- Data watch: reach figures are not directly comparable, because the surveys differ in age band (0 to 5, 0 to 8, 3 to 12, 6 to 12, 6 to 13, 8 to 18), country and question (“ever”, “last month”, “at least occasionally”). The US child-podcast benchmark dates from June 2023 and no newer edition was found. Ofcom’s UK children’s media use report could not be retrieved for verification and is not used here. On hardware, the Toniebox maker’s FY2025 release mentions a 10 million Tonieboxes sold milestone in September 2025 while its boilerplate cites around 11.8 million activated; we report the activation figure as the company’s own claim. Smart speaker ownership is measured on different bases (49% of US households with young children vs an estimated 112 million Americans aged 12 and older), so the two figures cross-check direction, not level. The audiobook trial’s preprints described lower-income gains more positively than the published version; this article follows the published paper. Children’s and young adult audiobook sales were reported only as among the fastest-growing genres, without a published share.
Last updated: November 6, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when tonies SE publishes its full-year 2026 results and Ofcom releases its 2027 children’s media use report.