In
today’s social media world where one usually spends time on their phone before
going to bed, here are a few important points to keep in mind. This will surely
make you ditch the phone and go for a book
We’re
all commitment phobes. We scan, we skim, we browse, but rarely do we read.Our
eyes pingpong back and forth from Facebook posts to open chat boxes, unclicked
emails to GIFs of dancing cats, scanning for keywords but barely digesting what
we see. Average time spent on an online article is 15 seconds.
In
2014, the Pew Research Center revealed that one-quarter of American adults
hadn’t read a single book in the previous year. And that’s a shame because
those who read exhibit significantly greater memory and mental abilities at all
stages in life. They’re also better public speakers, thinkers and, according to
some studies, better people in general.
Cracking
open a book before you go to bed could help combat insomnia, too: A 2009 study
from researchers at University of Sussex showed that six minutes of reading
reduces stress by 68 per cent, thus clearing the mind and readying the body for
sleep.
The
reasoning by psychologist and study author Dr. David Lewis is that a book is
“an active engaging of the imagination,” one that “causes you to enter an
altered state of consciousness.” It doesn’t matter if your book of choice is by
James Patterson or James Joyce, fiction or fact, so long as it you find it
fully absorbing. Because when the mind is engaged in a world constructed by
words, tension evaporates and the body relaxes, paving the way for sleep.
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