Danica Davidson
November 21, 2023 
It used to be that manga were only read as physical books, but as technology has advanced, reading manga digitally has grown. Oricon ME recently did an internet survey in Japan to see who is reading the most digital manga, and it might not be your first guess.
The survey, which occurred in May and June 2023, consisted of 10,438 people, all of them digital readers. So this isn’t a physical book versus digital book thing, it’s an issue of seeing people who like digital manga and have subscribed to ecomics, and figuring out which age groups are the most involved here. Breaking down the numbers, the people in Japan who read the most digital manga are those in their 50s. And about half of Japanese people in their 50s who are reading digital manga are doing so basically every day.
People in their 40s, meanwhile, had a high rate of reading digital manga daily, at 45.9 percent. The digital manga readers with the lowest rate of reading online each day are young people between 10 and 19 years old. Their percentage is 6.2%, a significant difference from the people in their 50s.
SoraNews24, which reported on this survey, also noted some of the online Japanese responses to the results:
“It’s so easy to get hooked and not be able to stop with e-comics…I try not to look at them, but somehow I always get sucked in…”
“I always like to hold the physical copy in my hands, so I’ve never subscribed to an e-comic service before.”
“Whoah, I would have thought the younger age groups would have been at the top.”
“Yup, I’ve moved to e-comics only. I’ve got no need for bookshelves anymore.”
“My mental image is that 50-year-olds like reading from physical books.”
Do you have a preference on how you read your manga?
Source: SoraNews24
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