Exploring the Impact of Worldreader’s BookSmart App on Child Development: A Report from Kenya

Founded in 2010, Worldreader aims to empower children worldwide by making reading accessible anytime, anywhere. Focusing on children aged 0-5, Worldreader uses its mobile-first, low-bandwidth approach to bring books directly into the hands of parents and caregivers worldwide through multilingual content and pre-and post-reading activities for families that support reading comprehension, social-emotional learning, and play-based learning, which reinforce family cohesion and bonding.

Their goal is simple but powerful: support families in creating their routines to develop habits that foster a culture of reading. Ensuring parents read to their young children at least 25 unique books a year, will start them on the journey to developing early literacy, social-emotional, and digital literacy skills, priming them to learn during the early years and driving school readiness so they can accelerate their learning once formal schooling begins  Through this simple, yet evidence-based approach, Worldreader is addressing the global literacy crisis by starting in the home, where learning begins.

Worldreader offers a scalable, accessible, and sustainable solution to the global literacy crisis.

Committed to ongoing research and evaluating its impact, Worldreader recently partnered with the International Centre for EdTech Impact (ICEI) to explore how families' engagement with the BookSmart app—an innovative platform offering free, culturally relevant books in multiple languages on their mobile device —affects children's socio-emotional skills, literacy development, and parents' attitudes toward reading.

The research set out to uncover how effective BookSmart is as a digital tool for boosting early childhood education while fostering a culture of reading within families.

The impact study took place in Nairobi, Kenya, involving children from two local early childhood centres, with data collected at three key stages: baseline, midline, and endline across 22 weeks. It was implemented with the support of ICEI’s local research partner, Laterite (led by Laura Baensch, Mercy Muttai, Judy Korir and Martin Gichuru), and quality-assured by Professor Sharon Wolf (University of Pennsylvania) and Professor Natalia I. Kucirkova (University of Stavanger and Director of ICEI). The findings are currently under peer-review for an academic journal publication.

The preliminary results from the study are promising: significant improvements were observed in children’s socio-emotional and emergent literacy scores compared to baseline levels. These gains were not correlated, indicating that the two skill areas developed independently.

Interestingly, although app engagement metrics, such as the number of books started and finished, did not show a direct link to socio-emotional development, the total time spent reading was significantly associated with literacy improvements. This suggests that the more time children spend reading, the greater their literacy gains.

By the endline of the study, children showed improvements in both socio-emotional and emergent literacy scores, reinforcing the potential of the BookSmart app to support simultaneous development across multiple domains. Although the families’ overall app engagement declined slightly over time, the majority of parents reported high satisfaction with the app, highlighting its strong potential to foster sustained and growing engagement in the future.

The findings from the study suggest that the BookSmart app is a promising tool for strengthening both literacy and socio-emotional skills in children.

Worldreader, 2025.

Erin Williams, Senior Strategic Operations Officer at Worldreader commented:

“Worldreader continues to invest significantly in our BookSmart content to ensure the highest quality books, activities, and games are available at no cost, making replacement behavior compelling. We believe that supporting parents and caregivers to invest just 10 minutes a day in reading to the young children in their lives is critically important. Rather than adding to the demands on parents, we provide families with free content and messaging that encourages them to replace a few minutes of their passive time spent on social media or other platforms with active time reading to their children, capturing these opportunities to impact their children’s learning potential before the school years begin.”

As the first study looking at how BookSmart impacts children in Kenya, it also highlighted areas where the app could be improved. Specifically, children showed limited vocabulary growth and struggled with remembering stories. These findings offer Worldreader a chance to enhance the app with features that help children learn more words and better remember and discuss the stories they read, ultimately improving the app’s effectiveness.

Through their ongoing collaboration, ICEI and Worldreader are contributing to the international conversation on the importance of integrating technology with traditional learning methods to create a more equitable and effective learning environment for children worldwide. To read more about how digital books can support children’s learning, explore the research by The Open University and the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab.

This research serves as an example of how data-driven insights, coupled with innovative tools, can help tackle some of the challenges of the global literacy crisis. By examining the nuances of children’s reading engagement and its effects on learning outcomes, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how technology can bridge gaps in education, particularly in underserved communities.