In this study, we used an academic resilience framework to explore how adolescents from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds overcame adversity and achieved high levels of reading proficiency. Our main aim was to investigate whether digital reading practices and reading engagement (reading motivation and metacognitive strategies) could act as protective factors, individually and collectively, promoting academic resilience among students with low SES. We conducted a multi‐group structural equation model analysis with serial mediators to identify the characteristics of resilient students and their resilience pathways. We used a nationally representative sample of US adolescents from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 data. The results indicated that engaged readers—internally motivated and strategic—were resilient readers. Reading engagement was a source of resilience and helped them achieve high proficiency in reading as a consequence. Reading motivation and metacognitive strategies worked in tandem and sequentially to build resilient and strong readers and were also important mechanisms for linking digital reading practices to reading achievement. We thus highlight simultaneous motivational and strategic development in reading for low‐SES students. It is particularly critical to increase students' overall level of reading motivation and to strengthen its pathways to metacognitive strategies and reading achievement. This process would be enhanced further by incorporating digital reading practices into instruction for engaged reading. Digital reading was related to reading motivation, and then to better awareness of metacognitive strategies, which in turn was shown to be linked to increased reading achievement for all students.