Discover how reading reduces stress, strengthens the brain, and helps fight anxiety in a fast-paced, tech-driven world.
Just like our bodies, our brains need working out as well. The human ability to think critically is one directly linked to our survival, after all. The problem is, we live in a technological ecosystem that often does the critical thinking for us, aiming to simplify our lives.
So, what’s the remedy…if there even is one?
Reading.
How Reading Reduces Stress and Anxiety
Picking up a good book can be understood as an activity of leisure, but it is so much more than that. Your brain wants to have complex thoughts; it wants to find connections and stimulate itself.
Reading has been found, time and time again, to build a person’s white matter in the brain, the area responsible for learning and cognitive function. Reading is, therefore, not just a literary escape; it literally changes your brain. A thinking, working brain is more likely to also be a happy one.
Escaping Reality Through Books
It is rare that a person feels completely fulfilled in their career, so they often turn to art forms like reading to give them that feeling of creative or cultural satisfaction. Reading helps us escape the reality we live in by allowing us to lose ourselves within a plot or world that an author has so purposefully created.
While we cannot numb ourselves to reality, we can allow our brains to take this moment of rest. Sometimes, it is only when the world is quiet and we have time for leisure and reflection that we are able to slow ourselves down.
The Link Between Technology, Anxiety, and Depression
Our world is instant; it is tiny little messages demanding sudden attention, but it is not the way humans were designed to live. Levels of anxiety and depression are known to be rising in society. Studies found that, around the time teenagers started getting access to smartphones, levels of anxiety also spiked amongst adolescents.
Our dependence on technology is already running deeper, so we must try and clamber onto the lifeboat now. We must remember that saving our attention spans and reducing our likelihood of high anxiety or depression can be achieved through picking up a book.
Even if you finish a book and decide you didn’t like it, at least you came up with that thought on your own, and it is not just another example of artificial intelligence telling you how to live.
How Reading Builds Connection and Reduces Loneliness
Depression can be devastatingly isolating. Humans long to be understood, and sometimes even our friends and families can make us feel like strangers in our own cities. Reading is full of fanciful worlds, worlds that include the broadest range of characters, tropes, and stories.
Writing is limitless, and, as such, we are bound to one day come across a piece of writing that seems to stare right into your being. As if someone had peered into the window of your life and reported back to the author of the story. Suddenly, when we come across work like this, we don’t feel lonely anymore.
Scientific Studies Linking Reading and Mental Health
A 2009 study on the link between stress-relief and reading found that, unsurprisingly, reading just six minutes a day was linked to lower rates of stress by 68%. Since then, countless other studies have said the same thing: reading can promote mental well-being. Reading is not just an art, nor just a way of life, but also a practice of self-care.
It is investing the time into yourself, both for your own happiness and to know that it is one of the best ways to keep your brain active, strong, and healthy. Some of us do not believe we have time for self-care, but if you can pick up a book and spare six minutes of your day, you’re already making the first step. Reading isn’t a cure, but the data is undeniable.
Final Thought: Feed Your Brain, Nurture Your Happiness
It doesn’t have to be a literary piece; pick up a book that you enjoy, and you’ll still reap the benefits. We get too caught up in what other people think of us, including what they think of the books we read, but we have to remember our lives are our own. We need to live our lives as we want, and on that note, read the books we want to read.
It can be easy to get swept up in this fast-paced culture, and it requires real strength and effort to slow ourselves down enough to pick up a book. Allowing ourselves time for reading is not only a quiet act of defiance against this world of instantaneity, but it is that lifeboat our brain requires.
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Vincent Phan
Vincent is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 1000 Libraries Magazine. He is a Paris-born ex-corporate turned bookseller and philosopher, on a global mission to spread the joy of physical books in our age of digital technology.
