You're Not Better Than the Screen Watchers

Greetings dear readers. I'm writing this from a balcony in Barcelona, under a jacaranda tree, kids playing somewhere below, an epic fantasy novel in my lap. I’m reading the "The Lions of Al-Rassan" by Guy Gavriel Kay, loosely set on the reconquest of medieval Spain. The book is truly excellent. And yes, I’m a prof who feels zero shame in reading and loving fantasy novels.

A year ago I wrote an essay arguing that we’ve turned reading into a moral virtue when it’s really just one good way among many to spend an afternoon. I still believe that. So I’m republishing it today for you all to enjoy.

Please tell me why I’m wrong in the comments!

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I'm about to commit academic heresy.

I love books. One of my peak memories remains lounging at a café in Split, Croatia, lost in a non-fiction paperback while hearing the murmur of people walking by in the quaint old town. As a child and adolescent, I would escape the world with books, typically fantasy or science fiction. Later in university, I got a taste for more “respectable” literature, though of late I have returned to my love of epic fantasy, unashamed. Reading, in other words, is my idea of paradise.

And yet.

I can't help but wonder: why do we treat reading for pleasure as inherently virtuous? Why do we look down on those who prefer Netflix to novels?

I feel this tension acutely as a parent. Despite all those nights reading to my (then) young children, despite trying every trick imaginable (including, yes, literally paying them to read like some economist's experiment), they've grown into teenagers who do not read books that are not assigned to them in class. I feel like I've screwed up, as if my kids' disinterest in books reflects some parenting failure.

But maybe the real failure is turning reading itself into some kind of moral virtue, as if the medium we use to absorb ideas and stories matters more than what we learn from them.

And when I write that “we” treat reading as a moral virtue, I really mean “I.” I look down on people who don’t read, or even who don’t read enough. I mean, I even sort of judge people who “read” via audiobook instead of text. What a prick! But I also know that I’m not alone in my prickishness: there is a growing panic about young people, even at elite universities, who don’t read.

We didn’t always moralize reading, though. In fact, some of history's greatest thinkers were deeply skeptical of it. Plato warned that reading and writing would erode people’s memory capacities. In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was genuine moral panic about novel reading, particularly among women; unlike today, though, that panic was over people reading too much. Critics worried that books would corrupt minds, inflame passions, and waste precious time that could be spent on more virtuous pursuits.

Perhaps reading came to be seen as virtuous when it was perceived as a marker of class and education. For much of the 20th century, literacy, and especially recreational reading, was a privilege of the leisure class. As historian Jonathan Rose has demonstrated, some working-class readers did seek out serious literature, but they were often exceptions. For most, losing yourself in a novel remained a luxury requiring time, money, and a quiet space—things in short supply for people working long hours.

This hierarchy of reading material still haunts us. I remember browsing a used bookstore in Providence, Rhode Island during my grad school days, puzzled by their separate sections for fiction and literature. I guess what the bookstore was trying to convey was that some books were for entertainment, others for enlightenment. Never mind that this distinction often mapped perfectly onto class lines: mass market paperbacks for the masses, hardcover books for the private-school set.

Even today, we maintain an unspoken hierarchy of passive pursuits that feels suspiciously like old class distinctions. Reading literary fiction and serious nonfiction sits at the top of this prestige pyramid. Below that, we might grudgingly accept so-called prestige television or arthouse cinema (yes, you’re allowed to admit you watched Severance or love impenetrable David Lynch films). Then comes reading other books: fiction, thrillers, fantasy. Further down, we find regular TV and movies. And at the bottom, despite their complex narratives and problem-solving demands, video games.

Of course, this pyramid doesn’t just track medium, but also content. A person reading a trashy romance (or my beloved epic fantasy) might still be outranked by someone who streamed a Yorgos Lanthimos film and nodded solemnly while Emma Stone wandered around nude for the fifteenth time. But the broader structure still holds: we respect reading not necessarily because it’s more enriching, but because educated people have been respecting it for generations.

Let me be clear about what I'm questioning here. I'm not challenging the value of literacy or the clear link between reading ability and academic achievement. What I'm puzzling over is why, once we're past our formal education, we still treat curling up with a book as inherently more virtuous than other leisure activities.

I decided to ask ChatGPT why reading is important, and it regurgitated some standard talking points: Reading improves cognitive function! Builds empathy! Reduces stress! You know the claims. But when you actually dig into the research, the evidence is surprisingly flimsy.

Take that seductive claim that reading fiction makes you more empathic. This idea exploded about a decade ago, with headlines that would make a grifter take careful notes. The BBC, for example, suggested reading could make you a better person—as if reading Macbeth could transform you into someone morally spotless.

But like so many findings from that era of psychology, these studies haven't exactly aged well. New information has come to light, man. Whether you're looking at forensic statistical analyses or attempted replications, the evidence keeps coming up short. I checked in with my friend Raymond Mar about this—he's a professor at York University and basically the expert on this stuff. His take? While reading fiction over years might nudge your empathy dial up a bit, there's nothing magical about books. TV shows and movies seem to work just as well. Of course, it probably depends more on the story’s content than the medium. There are trashy books and brilliant TV shows, and vice versa. Raymond tells me that as long as the story invites you to think about other minds, it seems to do the job, whether it’s printed on paper or streaming on HBO.

Sorry, book snobs. Yes, me too.

And those vaunted cognitive benefits? Sure, reading engages our brains, but so does trying to assemble IKEA furniture or having a heated debate about who makes the better bagels—sorry New Yorkers, Montreal bagels are obviously superior. The evidence that reading specifically fights off cognitive decline or boosts working memory isn't particularly compelling.

Yes, books are fantastic learning tools. But let's not pretend they're the only game in town. These days, you can learn from podcasts, documentaries, long-form articles, or even (gasp!) YouTube tutorials. Which brings me to a personal example: why should I judge my kids for learning cooking basics from TikTok instead of cracking open celebrity chef Matty Matheson’s latest cookbook? (Fun fact: I live next door to Matty!)

There is also the notion that reading is an active form of leisure. Yes, reading does require you pay attention, move your eyeballs, and to generate your own mental imagery, but is that really more active than playing a complex video game or watching a film? When I'm truly absorbed in a good book, it doesn't feel effortful at all; I'm just as passively consuming the story as I would be watching a great movie. There’s one important difference: books stop when you stop. They don’t keep playing in the background while you scroll Instagram. That demand for sustained attention might be part of the magic. Reading doesn’t allow your attention to drift in the same way as movies or TV (though, neither do video games). It asks you to stay with it, to resist distraction. And maybe that’s exactly why we value it.

Sustaining attention, after all, is effortful. Reading takes more discipline than watching a movie, at least to start and to persist. And I wonder if the effort cost of reading makes it seem more important and meaningful.

In a paper just published from my lab, my industrious student Aidan Campbell found a connection between how hard something feels and how meaningful we appraise it to be. It’s the same reason we value the imperfect IKEA furniture we build over the perfect IKEA furniture we get built for us. In a separate, newish paper, Aidan found that effortful activities detract from pleasure at the same time that they add to perceived meaning. In other words, we might not necessarily enjoy reading that Faulkner novel, but we’ll think we accomplished something important after doing so. So, do we value reading because it’s harder than the alternatives? Is it a story we tell ourselves to justify the hard work we put in?

Our collective attitude toward audiobooks is telling. While we've grown more accepting of them, there's still a subtle hierarchy where "real" reading ranks above listening. But why? If the goal is absorbing and engaging with ideas, why does it matter whether those ideas enter through our eyes or ears? One reason might be attention: it’s easier to let your mind wander during an audiobook than when staring at a page that doesn’t advance itself. The audiobook skepticism suggests our reverence for reading might be more about the perceived virtue of effort than actual outcomes.

The more I think about it, perhaps what we need isn't a defense of reading, but a more honest conversation about why we've loaded this particular leisure activity with so much moral and social significance.

Sure, we all look down on the Love Island USA viewer (unfairly or not), but even among high-quality, complex content, we still elevate the reader. Someone working through the latest Margaret Atwood novel is generally seen as more intellectually or morally serious than someone watching House of the Dragon, even if both are engaging with rich, layered storytelling. Perhaps we can acknowledge that someone who never reads books for pleasure but devours thoughtful podcasts, engages with complex games, or critically analyzes film isn't intellectually inferior to a bookworm.

I’ll keep reading because I love it. But I’m going to try my best not to judge others who spend their leisure time doing something else. If the medium doesn’t consistently lead to better outcomes, then maybe what we’re really defending isn’t reading itself, but the cultural halo we’ve built around it.

Maybe it feels good to think we’re better than the screen watchers. But what if we’re not?