Are audible books a good alternative?

[Howcanwehelp]

My 11 will not read, I've tried everything but it's a battle. To stop the argument I've downloaded borrow box onto his phone and given him the boy in striped pj to listen to. It's a revelation, he's enjoying the story (so far) and it's taken out the stress.
However is it a good subsitueor should I be forcing him to read?
Also any other suggestions what to give him to listen to?

DS uses a combination of books, audiobooks and documentaries. He listened to the longer Harry Potter books, he read one, listened to one, read one etc.. Later in he had things like Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Hunger Games...

In yr11 he now is listening through the Hunt for Red October series, with some non-fiction thrown in. He reads non-fiction books usually, normally socio-political histories, magazines- The Economist and history ones.

His English teacher describes his written work as “sophisticated” and recognises themes taken from the books he has been influenced by- 1984 and Brave New World for instance. So clearly listening rather than reading hasn’t caused an issue there.

If he wants to listen to audiobooks for a while, I’d encourage that while offering a wider selection of reading material. Perhaps just check eyesight etc to ensure that the lack of interest isn’t disguising some that makes reading difficult. In our case DS has a specific learning difficulty- it was impossible to notice when reading, but he simply wasn’t interested. It turned out that the words all squished up and stretched out, he couldn’t work out how anyone read for longer than 10 minutes without losing their minds.

In short, yes. He will learn a lot about how texts work - he'll sustain attention across longer stories, understand story structure and keep his hand in with fiction. It isn't the same as active reading but it will develop his comprehension and inference and if he won't read anyway, it's a good option.