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How Skim Reading From Screens Is Rewiring Your Brain (It’s Not Good)
Getting lost in a book does incredible things to your brain. Not only does reading make you smarter, less lonely, and just plain happier, but following along with the characters in a great story actually lights up brain circuits associated with whatever the characters are experiencing, giving you one of the world’s greatest empathy workouts.
But how many times these days do you actually sink into an old-fashioned book for hours (or even 15 consecutive minutes)? Most of us read all day long as we respond to our pinging phones and try to keep up with the never-ending hurricane that is the news. But to actually read undistracted for large chunks of time? That’s getting rarer.
What are we losing by this change? Does reading dozens of news stories and social media posts every day do the same thing for our brains as one long novel or biography? Not by a long shot, answers Harvard-trained neuroscientist and expert on the science of reading Maryanne Wolf in The Guardian.
When it comes to deep reading, use it or lose it.
Human babies are born with a natural capacity to learn to walk and talk. That’s not true of understanding written language, Wolf points out. Evolutionarily speaking, making sense of the written word is a much…
