Reading should be promoted for different reasons

Every day, students, teenagers, adults, and children are encouraged to read. Most of the time this reading is encouraged because reading will make them smarter, make them a better reader, or help them pass a test. All of this reasoning is great, however for the most part, it would be difficult to convince someone who hates reading, to read using these ideals. Why would someone who hates reading want to read in order to become a better reader? In short, they would not.

Reading has many benefits that people do not talk about such as the ability to expand one’s world view, be a great stress reliever, or prevent health problems. While every once in a while, these factors are brought to attention, they are normally merely glossed over or briefly mentioned. However, avid readers normally read for these reasons, not because they want to become a better reader. As a person who enjoys reading myself, I can testify that I love reading because I enjoy seeing what is happening in the world the book takes place in, and it helps me to relieve stress.

In fact, I asked a couple of my friends, most of which are avid readers, why they read. I got a variety of answers, ranging from stress relief to being able to expanding on their creativity. However, one response that I received stood out from all of the others. My friend said that she reads because it takes her to places that she cannot go see or experience physically, but reading the words is able to take her to that place anyways. This goes to show reading is important because of its ability to entertain and show the readers what life is like in a completely different setting than their own.

It is easy to say that reading is able to transport people to another world, but it is an entirely different thing to believe that people will actually start reading due to this reasoning. That is why it is also important to encourage reading in other ways. One such way of encouraging reading is talking about the stress relieving effect reading has. Reading is one of the easy and most effective ways to relieve stress and that factor of reading is not often publicized.

When people think of relieving stress, a lot of them think of sitting down with a cup of tea, or listening to music. However, reading has been proven to be a much better stress reliever. For example, reading reduces stress 68% more than listening to music, 100% more than drinking a cup of tea, 300% more than going for a walk, and 600% more than playing a video game. This goes to show that reading is one of the most stress relieving things a person can do.

It makes sense that reading is one of the most stress relieving activities, because unlike any other activity reading has the ability to transport people to a world that is not their own. One of the most abundant answers I received to my text of why people enjoy reading was that they thought reading provided them with an escape from the world they are living in. Receiving a break from homework, work, friends, and family helps to relieve stress, and the ability that reading has to provide this break from life is unrivaled by any other pass time.

Reading is not only a stress reliever, but it also is able to prevent diseases later on, in life. Perhaps, the most connected disease for this situation is dementia and Alzheimer’s, which have both been proven to be less likely to appear in readers. This research means that simply reading throughout a person’s life makes it so that person is less likely to face some of the most detrimental illnesses facing modern day society. There is no reason why people should not be taking advantage of these facts and attempting to save themselves trouble in the future.

All in all, promoting reading as a way to become a better reader is not a good idea. Instead people should be presenting reading as a way to experience other worlds, reduce stress, and prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s. By promoting reading in these ways more people may be willing to give reading a chance, and gain the benefits of reading. Reading to become a better reader is a good thing, but it does nothing to truly promote reading. Instead we need to change the way reading is promoted in order to introduce more people to the benefits of reading instead of gaining more reading skills.