With declining attention spans, reading — regardless of the genre — should be celebrated, not criticized.
Reading is one of the few remaining activities that truly demands full attentiveness, requiring undivided and sustained attention for an extended period. Readers must recall complex pieces of information from pages ago to aid their brain in developing and understanding the plot before them.
And despite the rhetoric of some, these benefits don’t disappear by genre.
It is proven that reading makes you smarter, depending on how you define intelligence. Yet some still critique others for not reading the “right” kind of books. But if the hobby itself is strengthening your brain and expanding your attention span, it shouldn’t matter if you are reading Shakespeare or J.K. Rowling.
Expanding one’s attention span is especially important given the typical experience on social media, where users may not even recall the video they just scrolled past was about.
Gloria Mark, a professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, conducted a study that showed the average time people spend on any given screen before switching to a different task was 150 seconds in 2004. In 2012, she found it had dropped to 75 seconds, and it declined further to only 47 seconds in 2023.
Alternatively, children who read for pleasure in early life have longer attention spans and better mental health, a University of Cambridge study revealed.
With all these clear neurological benefits, reading should always be rewarded, regardless of the genre of the book you are diving into.
And yet, the education system sets you up with a belief that certain books are automatically of greater value than others. Classic literature and dense nonfiction are on every syllabus, and lighter fantasy novels are nowhere to be found.
Trending genres like “romantasy” have sparked debate on literary elitism. Blockbuster hits such as Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and the Sarah J. Mass series A Court of Thorns and Roses face constant stigma. Critics say books in this genre are “tacky” and “unserious.” These arguments detract from the fact we should be celebrating, not chastising, those who read.
That does not mean that every criticism of romantasy is baseless, nor does it mean that every romantasy novel is a literary masterpiece. But to deem an entire genre as unsophisticated and use that label to dismiss it as an inferior form of literature is inherently problematic.
This isn’t to say that expanding one’s horizons and trying out different books isn’t important. Growth as both a person and reader can directly come from picking up something you wouldn’t normally gravitate towards. While this will always remain true, if you tend to mainly read books people online love to call “bad literature,” that is okay.
Reading romantasy doesn’t make you less smart, less serious, or any less worthy of respect; you already beat out 46 per cent of adults by even finishing a book.
When we make the active decision to pick up a book, instead of watching television or turning to social media, we are choosing an activity that our brain, and attention span, will thank us for.
Reading is good for you, read whatever you want.
Julia Ludden is third-year Commerce student and The Journal’s Postscript Editor
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