There Are Consequences For Not Reading Books

When we write about the importance of reading, we are talking about reading print, not on the internet. There is a distinct and important difference.
People are reading fewer books as they addictively spend meaningless hours daily on their phones, binge-watch a Netflix series, or passively watching TV programs for hours before heading to bed.
“The proportion of Americans who read books for pleasure is now at its lowest level ever recorded,” Austin Rose writes.
A Gallup poll found that nearly 60% of Americans no longer read a single book in a year. That figure has tripled since 1978, which is no surprise considering TVs started being placed in every room. Then came the Internet in the early 2000s, enabling the explosion of social media sites. With each step along the way, books were replaced by effortless and often mindless entertainment.
Today, the average American spends 4.5 hours on their phone daily. More than half of our teenagers spend more than 7.5 hours daily on their phones. Very young children are handed electric gadgets to entertain them while too many parents fixate on their phones rather than reading their children books.
Our turning away from reading books has consequences that should be deeply disturbing for parents, teachers, and society because of what they have done to our children’s ability to learn, adults’ ability to comprehend what is happening in our world, and the increased lack of compassion we feel toward one another. All our linked to our focus on electronic entertainment.
With each passing year, children are reading fewer books or not reading at all. It should come as no surprise that at the same time reading skills test scores for teens are falling.
“When it comes to screen time, social media addiction remains a threat for early and evolving learners,” Sunil Iyengar of the National Endowment for the Arts writes. “The phenomenon must be understood not just in terms of healthy brain development (but for) youth mental health more generally,” Iyengar writes.
Rose writes that children who focus on screen reading and learning in elementary school lose “the equivalent of two-thirds of a year’s growth in reading comprehension.” Our grammar is improved and our vocabulary expanded when we read books.
Anne Mangen, a professor of literacy at Stavanger University in Norway, studies what the internet does to our brains.  Online we scan, skim, and jump about, never able to focus for long on any one thing. The next dopamine hit to our pleasure senses is waiting for the next click or swipe.
We can no longer concentrate, even for short periods of time, on what we are doing whether it is on the job, or sitting at a holiday dinner table with family. The addiction to reach for that phone overpowers our work responsibilities and social interactions. We are no longer capable of being present in the moment.
When we read print books, we direct our attention to the words on the page, but at the same time, our imagination is stimulated as we put ourselves in the places and situations of the characters we are coming to know. When you read fiction, you gain empathy as you relate to characters who face discrimination and hardship. It makes you more aware what others face in the real life that surrounds you.
“The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people’s emotions,” Johann Hari writes in his book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention- and How to Think Deeply Again.” In the process, our empathy for them increases.
When we focus on our phones, our creativity is being stolen as we interrupt the process of letting our minds wander.
“Without mind-wandering, we find it harder to make sense of the world — and in the jammed-up state of confusion that it creates, we become even more vulnerable to the next source of distraction that comes along,” Hari writes.
You’re likely to be significantly less creative. Why? “Because where do new thoughts [and] innovation come from?” Professor Earl Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was asked in an interview. “They come from your brain shaping new connections out of what you’ve seen and heard and learned.
“Your mind, given free undistracted time, will automatically think back over everything it absorbed, and it will start to draw links between them in new ways.  This all takes place beneath the level of your conscious mind, but this process is how new ideas pop together, and suddenly, two thoughts that you didn’t think had a relationship suddenly have a relationship,” he explains. A new insight or a creative idea that solves a problem is born.
“It takes mental space and energy to convert your experiences into memories, and if you are spending your energy instead on switching very fast, you’ll remember and learn less,” Rose writes.
Try reading the scroll bar on a TV screen while someone on air is relating a story. Now try to recall what the person was saying – you’ll find that you have mostly spaced it out. Divided attention, jumping from one thing to another constantly, degrades memories and experiences.
“Research has shown that people who read literary fiction — stories that explore the inner lives of characters — show a heightened ability to understand the feelings and beliefs of others,” medical and mental health freelance reporter Rebecca Joy Stanborough writes.
There have been few times in our nation’s history when this understanding of those who are different from us is needed. We are too frequently pushed to hate and fear towards those who don’t look or sound like us or whose religious or cultural beliefs are different.
America is becoming more diverse. This diversity powers our innovative spirit. Newcomers provide the employees our businesses, manufacturers, schools, farms, and medical facilities desperately need.
Reading novels will make us more welcoming. Open your children’s minds to a better world by encouraging them to read books. It will benefit them in many ways throughout their lives.