Why is reading still important? Reading for even just a few minutes a day can positively impact one’s mental abilities and cognitive functions. But in today’s world, more people would rather scroll instead of reading a book.
Reading for just 15 minutes a day can boost your vocabulary and literacy. It can be beneficial for people because reading can help make someone’s writing more impactful and effective. Reading each day can also impact performance in school, especially in English classes because most English courses are all about reading comprehension and writing.
Most readers have reported realizing that reading has reduced their stress. It calms the brain and causes it to focus for longer while attention span increases. Individuals who have high anxiety and get nervous easily often read to reduce the stress that they are feeling. In research on how reading fiction can impact the brain, it was found that reading fiction and other literature can improve an individual’s social-cognitive abilities, meaning they learn how to better engage in conversations and talk to other individuals.
It is proven that only 32% of the US population reads books for pleasure and that 65% of Americans have not read a book in the past year. The article on reading statistics and facts also says that about 80% of families in the US have not bought or read a book in the past year.
Choosing which way you decide to read is also important. There are multiple ways to read a book or passage, including on paper, in audiobook form or online. It has been scientifically proven that students who read passages and books on paper have higher reading comprehension test scores than those who read books and passages online. Students and others that are online readers usually have something researchers call “Screen inferiority effect” which means they have a lower information retention and understanding as opposed to paper readers.
Social media can have a huge impact on how much we read because in our generation currently, most teens spend more time scrolling than reading. In a study on social media and how it affects their education it talks about how kids between ages nine and 13 with social media did not perform well in reading, vocabulary tests and memory while students without social media performed better and had higher grades and test scores.
Reading can be fun, especially if it isn’t thought of as a task or a chore. There are hundreds of different types of book genres to choose from. There’s a genre for everyone, romance, comedy, young adult novels, mystery, fiction, non-fiction and more. And even if you don’t particularly like reading and enjoy something visual instead, there are always comics to be read. Another way to make reading fun is seeing if a movie you watched has been adapted into book form.
So, the next time you think of scrolling on your phone, instead, open a book and read for some time because it can lower stress, something that scrolling through reels won’t.
