Society has lost its love of reading. Television is the new source of entertainment. This does, of course, make sense. Reading requires a deal of mental effort, forces you to imagine, build the characters and scenes for yourself, come up with everything the author leaves out. It forces you to have a vocabulary, to learn, to voluntarily consider another’s opinion. All TV requires of you is to lie motionless.

But what is the difference between reading and watching? Both use the eyes to communicate information. Both tell stories. Both are forms of entertainment. The difference is how the brain reacts to either. Reading takes effort. Staring blankly at a page does not get you anywhere. You cannot zone out and still finish your book. Focus and dedication are prerequisites for reading. Reading develops your mind as well. Vocabularies are expanded, concepts are understood, information is relayed. Television does not do this nearly as well. There is a reason we are given textbooks and not movies for our classes. Reading is the foundation of education.

There was a time when leisure reading was seen as a rebellious worthless activity teens did. Only scientific journals and classic academic literature were worth reading, thought society at that time. Parents didn’t want their children wasting their lives inside a fantasy world. They didn’t see the great advantage to this form of mental exercise, and were not able to understand that there are forms of intelligence other than traditional academic knowledge.

The same could be said of television and movies. Is there an imaginative advantage to sitting in front of a screen? The studies we have say no, but are they looking in the right places? Are there other forms of intelligence that are important, and only nurtured through this visual medium? Only time will be able to tell us.

I love literature and I'm sad to see so many turn away from it and lose their love for it. Reading has hugely aided in my personal development. With it, I am able to read words penned by the greats of history. Our Founding Fathers’ journals give insight to the mindset of the men who believed in the freedoms we now have. The fathers of philosophy pass their teachings on to me through their written works. I can experience any point in history, take part in wars and revolutions, meet kings and lords, live another life. Fantasy worlds become real, worlds can be explored, alternate realities spring into existence.

There is so much benefit to reading, and letting us move on from this important source of information and entertainment would be a shame to both this generation and all the generations that have created literature before us. There is an infinite amount of text to be read and from which to learn. A world of knowledge sits waiting to be read.