Most people click “I agree” without reading a word. According to Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey of 2,000 US consumers, 91% accept terms and conditions without reading them, and the rate climbs to 97% among 18 to 34 year olds. The documents businesses spend hours drafting are, for nearly all readers, invisible.
That gap between what gets written and what gets read shapes everything from consumer protection law to how a document should actually be structured. Below is the current data on who reads terms and conditions, how long it takes when they do, and what that means if you are the one publishing the document.
What percentage of people read terms and conditions?
A small minority reads terms and conditions in any meaningful way. Pew Research Center’s 2019 survey of 4,272 US adults found only 9% say they always read a privacy policy or terms and conditions before agreeing, with another 13% saying they do so often. Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey, fielded across 2,000 US consumers, puts the flip side at 91% who accept terms and conditions without reading them at all.
Figure 1: Self-reported reading frequency among US adults. Source: Pew Research Center, 2019, n=4,272.
Warning
Self-reported reading rates run higher than actual behavior. Separate research on click-through agreements has found a large share of people who claim to have read an agreement did not, so the Pew figures above should be read as an upper bound on real reading, not a floor.
The consistent finding across both survey and observed-behavior research is that reading terms and conditions is the exception, not the norm, and the gap between claimed and actual reading likely makes even the 9% figure generous.
How long does it actually take to read terms and conditions?
Almost no time at all, in practice. Obar and Oeldorf-Hirsch’s peer-reviewed 2020 study (n=543), published in Information, Communication & Society, had participants join a fictitious social network and tracked how long they spent on the terms of service before clicking through. The average was 51 seconds. At a normal adult reading speed of 250 to 280 words per minute, the same document should have taken 15 to 17 minutes to read in full.
The 51-second figure is not a rounding error. It means the typical person spends less than 6% of the time the document actually requires. The same study found the accompanying privacy policy, which should have taken 29 to 32 minutes, was read in an average of 73 seconds by participants who did not skip straight to the “quick join” option.
Figure 2: Actual versus expected reading time for a terms of service document. Source: Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch, Information, Communication & Society, 2020, n=543.
If your terms and conditions take 15 minutes to read properly, the data says almost nobody is giving it more than a minute, which puts the weight on getting the important clauses stated clearly near the top rather than buried on page four.
Does reading behavior change by age?
Yes, and the direction is not what many assume. Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey found 97% of 18 to 34 year olds accept terms and conditions without reading them, compared to 91% across all age groups combined, meaning younger consumers skip the document at a noticeably higher rate than the overall population, not a lower one.
Figure 3: Unread acceptance rate by age group. Source: Deloitte Global Mobile Consumer Survey, US edition, 2017, n=2,000.
The generational pattern holds up because younger consumers install more apps and sign up for more services, so they hit the “I agree” prompt more often, which appears to build the habit of skipping rather than reducing it.
Are terms and conditions written at a readable level?
Mostly not. A 2024 Social Media Lab study analyzing the terms of service and privacy policies of nine major social media platforms found every one of them required college-level reading comprehension to understand, a bar that sits well above the reading level of a large share of the people agreeing to them, including the teenagers who use platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.
That readability gap compounds the time problem above. A document that already gets 51 seconds of attention is also written above the comprehension level of a meaningful share of the people clicking accept, which is a compliance risk as much as a design one, particularly for any service with a mixed-age or international audience.
Figure 4: The minimum test a terms and conditions document should pass to be usable by an actual reader. Source: synthesized from Social Media Lab 2024 and Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch 2020 findings above.
You can improve both sides of that test at once. A terms and conditions generator that produces plain-language clauses in a consistent order gives readers a document that matches how little time and attention they are actually going to spend on it.
How has the reading-time problem changed over the years?
The scale of the problem has been documented for close to two decades, and every fresh measurement has pointed the same direction: more text, more services, less time. Carnegie Mellon researchers Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Cranor estimated in 2008 that if the average American read every privacy policy encountered in a year word for word, it would take about 244 hours, close to a month of full-time work, and valued the aggregate opportunity cost nationally at roughly 781 billion dollars. That estimate predates the current volume of apps, browser extensions, and connected devices each carrying their own terms, so it is best read as a conservative historical floor rather than a current figure.
Figure 5: Milestones in measuring the terms and conditions reading gap. Sources: McDonald & Cranor (2008), Deloitte (2017), Pew Research Center (2019), Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch (2020), Social Media Lab (2024).
The consistent thread across 16 years of research is that the gap between document length and reader attention has not closed. If anything, more services and longer documents have made it wider.
What is the reading gap in numbers?
| Measure | Figure | Source (year) |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers who accept T&Cs without reading | 91% | Deloitte (2017) |
| US adults who always read privacy policies/T&Cs | 9% | Pew Research Center (2019) |
| Average time spent reading a terms of service doc | 51 seconds | Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch (2020) |
| Expected reading time at normal reading speed | 15-17 minutes | Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch (2020) |
| Platforms requiring college-level reading comprehension | 9 of 9 studied | Social Media Lab (2024) |
Source: see full citations below.
The Bottom Line
The number that matters most is 91%. Nearly all consumers accept terms and conditions without reading them, and the people who do open the document spend about 51 seconds on something written to take a quarter of an hour. That is not a reader failure, it is a design constraint every business publishing terms and conditions has to work within. Documents that put the material terms, refund rights, and liability limits in plain language near the top get read by the small share of people who do look, and hold up better with regulators and courts when almost everyone else did not.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of people read terms and conditions before agreeing? About 9% of US adults say they always read terms and conditions or privacy policies before agreeing, according to Pew Research Center’s 2019 survey of 4,272 adults. Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey found 91% of consumers accept legal terms without reading them at all.
How long does it actually take people to read terms of service? In a peer-reviewed 2020 study by Obar and Oeldorf-Hirsch (n=543), participants spent an average of 51 seconds on a terms of service document that would take 15 to 17 minutes to read at a normal adult reading speed of 250 to 280 words per minute.
Do younger people read terms and conditions less than older people? Yes. Deloitte’s 2017 Global Mobile Consumer Survey found 97% of consumers aged 18 to 34 accept terms and conditions without reading them, compared to 91% across all US adults surveyed.
How readable are terms of service documents? Not very. A 2024 Social Media Lab study found the terms of service and privacy policies of all nine major social media platforms it analyzed required college-level reading comprehension to understand.
Sources and References
- Deloitte. (2017). “Global Mobile Consumer Survey, US Edition.” US cut of 2,000 consumers, part of a 51,000-respondent global survey.
- Pew Research Center. (2019). “Americans’ Attitudes and Experiences with Privacy Policies and Laws.” American Trends Panel survey, n=4,272 US adults, fielded June 3-17, 2019.
- Obar, J. A., & Oeldorf-Hirsch, A. (2020). “The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Networking Services.” Information, Communication & Society, 23(1). Experimental survey, n=543.
- Social Media Lab, Toronto Metropolitan University. (2024). “I Have Read and Agreed to the Terms: A New Look at the Readability of Social Media ToS and Privacy Policies.” Readability analysis of 9 major platforms, collected March 2024.
- McDonald, A. M., & Cranor, L. F. (2008). “The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies.” A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 4(3), Carnegie Mellon University.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. The 2008 Carnegie Mellon reading-time estimate predates the current volume of apps and connected services and is presented as a historical floor rather than a current measurement. Reading-behavior figures are refreshed at least twice a year as newer survey data becomes available.
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