People are still reading texts, blogs, tweets, and online articles. But fewer of them are reading actual books. This is a problem, not only for our civilization but also for our mental health.
So says Peter Franklin in his Unherd article (behind a paywall) The decline of book-reading is more serious than we think. He opens with a reference to an Atlantic article entitled The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books. It reports that high schools are requiring less, if any, book reading, so colleges are finding that many of their students just can’t handle reading a whole book. As a result, the professors the author interviewed said that they are requiring less reading and are relying on mere excerpts from books.
Franklin also cites research that found a sharp decline in the habit of reading for pleasure. In 2012, just eleven years ago, 27% of 13 year olds read for fun. In 2023, only 14% do. But even among adults, according to a UK study, half of them do not read for pleasure. Interestingly, 35% of them say they used to, but no longer do.
There is something about long-form reading, though, that we need. Franklin describes it well:
Despite all the new ways we can be enriched, informed and entertained, we still need books as much as we used to. That’s because a great novel is about as close as you can get to stepping out of your consciousness and into someone else’s — and, for that matter, doing so in detail and for an extended period of time. Reading gets you over yourself — or at least beyond yourself. The mental health and wellbeing advantages of that should be obvious.
That link takes us to an article on the subject that tells us this:
Reading, particularly as a leisure activity, has been proven to support and improve mental health.
It has a demonstrable impact on common symptoms of loneliness, social (im)mobility and dementia and studies have indicated that reading can enhance social, mental, emotional and psychological wellbeing in patients with depression. It increases empathy, raises self-esteem, improves employment opportunities, and inspires creativity.
Reading for pleasure reduces psychological distress for college students, it improves theory of mind [the ability to understand other people’s minds], and it develops resilience and wellbeing for older people.
So much so, the Mental Health Foundation advises reading books and playing musical instruments as a way to preserve mental health in older age.
There is also a Christian dimension to this issue. Christians must read because God reveals Himself to us by means of a Book!
Do you read for pleasure? What benefits do you get from it? How is reading a book better than watching a movie of the same story? Or are you among the 35% who used to read books but no longer do? Why did you give it up?
And, speaking of the pleasure of reading, what books would you readers recommend to your fellow readers and, for that matter, in an effort to get them hooked, to the non-readers?
Photo: The Pleasure of Reading by Nicola via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In