I grew up the daughter of a woman who had a masters in English from Cornell and who fondly referred to the television as the “toxic box of dots.” Growing up, my mother made me read. She made me read everything from "Harry Potter" to "Gone With the Wind" in the hopes of instilling within me the invaluable messages that were woven between the words on the pages. I remember being little and resenting her for forcing me to read on Saturdays as opposed to waste my afternoons watching episode after episode of Spongebob Squarepants, like all of my friends did. But now, as someone who supposedly qualified as an adult, I have nothing but gratitude for my mother who made me read.

Today, I am an English major with major writing aspirations and I believe that is the result of a childhood full of books. As a child, and even still today, books provided for me a fantasy world of respite from the bullies and social pressures that infiltrated by elementary, middle, and high school life. Sure, the boy in my sophomore year Latin class might have been a jerk for the millionth day in a row, but I could come home and lose myself in the well-worn pages of a book and pretend that I was the crime-fighting badass in the book. I might have been self-conscious about my wide hips, but I could just as easily pretend I was the beautiful princess whose story unfolded before me just like her long blonde braid. It didn’t matter what it was that ailed me; there was no situation that a book could not fix.

Today, I don’t have as much time to read for leisure as I would like. I would give anything to go back to when I was eleven and my weekends were not occupied by trying to balance a workout and writing and grocery shopping and room cleaning and calling my mom and making money and every other mundane task in between. It breaks my heart, then, to see how many adults and children alike are glued to their screens today. I mean, you can’t even go to the grocery store without seeing a mother perusing the aisles as the child in front of her buries his or her face in an iPad. No, I’m not offering a critique on anyone’s parenting tactics; I, myself, am not a parent and can’t speak to how hard it is to corral a child into shopping cart and get them to sit still for an hour. I’m sure my own mother would have shoved a screen in my face when I was little if she’d had the opportunity. But the reality is, reading helps children cultivate the skills necessary to sit still for an hour. It helps cultivate so many invaluable skills that we need as adults to thrive. Here are just a few reasons we all need to stick our noses in the pages of a book:

It helps us focus better.

There are so many stimuli in the world around us. We try to simultaneously watch TV, check our texts, and have a conversation at any given moment. Being able to sit down and read for more than fifteen minutes at a time is a testament to your ability to focus. Harboring those skills at an early age will surely come full circle when you’re a college student attempting to read through a dissertation of some terribly boring subject.

It expands your vocabulary.

The more you read, the more words you’re exposed to, and the more those words will slip into your everyday jargon. Those eighth-grade spelling words will make more sense, too, as you begin to understand the use and context of more complex vocabulary. Use big words with caution, however; you don’t want to be a Mrs. Malaprop.

It's (basically) free.

In elementary school, every week, my little classes would trudge through the snow and rain and sun to the local library to pick out a new book for the week. I remember those trips with fondness, as I’d hide in the aisles and read jacket after jacket of books with flashy covers. Your local library is an arsenal of free entertainment. All you have to do is apply for a card and pay the occasional late fee if time gets the best of you. And the best part? You never have to worry about a book dying on you, like your phone.

It improves your memory.

Reading a book means memorizing characters and names and places and characteristics that all tie together with a perfect bow at the end (unless, of course, it’s a part of a series, where the author will inevitably leave you crippled by a cliffhanger that ruins your psyche until the next book comes out). As you read and have to remember all of those facts, your incredible brain fires synapse after synapse and helps strengthen your memory.

It makes you feel like you belong.

We’ve all reached a point in our lives where we felt alone in the world. That’s an undeniable truth of growing up. Chances are, there’s a book character somewhere in the pages upon pages of text that has been written in the past hundreds of years that is going through whatever you’re going through. When you lose yourself in the pages of a good book, there’s a big chance you’ll find exactly what it is you’re looking for.