I bet you’re expecting a satire piece, aren’t you? Well not today! I genuinely think there are a few ways reading can potentially cause more harm than good. But wait! Don’t go cutting up your library card and burning your books quite yet! First let’s talk about the 4 ways reading can make you dumber and then 3 ways we can read more smartly.

1. “It’s on the internet, it must be true.”

For anyone who has attended school in the past 10 years, hopefully a teacher at some point taught you the ways to use and not use the internet for research. “Never use Wikipedia. Anyone can write for it.” Not only Wikipedia, but anyone can make a website and publish anything they want. There are some great sources of information out there!…But there are also some completely idiotic sources out there! Learn to recognize a reputable article–who wrote it? Where is it published? How professional does the website look? Do they cite their information? And always check your facts! Cross-reference. Find other sources that say the same thing.

2. Social Media

False Information

Just like how the internet contains oodles of false information, social media can be a place for sharing that false information. At first glance, it can be hard to discern if something is true or not. I’ve seen so many prank posts and misinformed writers and sharers. Did you know that some people purposefully write articles with false information to deceptively get more shares and traffic to their website? Don’t support these meanies. Do everyone a favor and look into the article and check the facts before sharing. You’ll save yourself from looking silly and save many others from misinformation.

Facades

Everyone shares their best on social media. And that’s ok! As long as we’re not purposefully putting up facades and are willing to be REAL with people. However, because everyone puts out only the good of their lives, we only see a piece of the picture. We can easily become disillusioned that ‘so and so has such a perfect life’ and ‘everyone has it together but me.’

Truth bomb: NO ONE HAS IT ALL TOGETHER!

Don’t let reading about other people discourage you or deceive you. Remember that you never see the whole picture on social media. Even the most transparent person on social media has aspects of their lives that no one sees. Don’t believe everything they write and don’t make assumptions from these little pieces of their whole-life-puzzle.

3. Bad literature

We are all copycats. We see, we hear, and we copy. You might have heard it said before that people who read tend to have better vocabularies and writing skills. It’s because their brains subconsciously process and take note of all of the writing that they are reading. Well it’s the same for poorly written content. If all you read is text speech or horrible grammar, that will soon become your default communication style.

I remember my mom used to tell us that she could easily guess which friends we had been spending the most time with lately by how we spoke. As human beings we naturally pick up on what we hear and see and then begin to repeat it. It’s how we learn.

Not all writing is equal.

There are so many books and other written content that can take you to whole new worlds, challenge your thinking, teach you important lessons, and better your own writing skills. However, there is also content that will teach you the wrong things, the inaccurate things, the stinky things, the things that will hurt your communication skills.

Even on this blog I speak more informally and purposefully twist correct grammar and punctuation a tad to make it more conversational rather than academic. (After writing numerous highly academic papers and even working as a tutor, editing numerous academic papers, it is still quite painful for me to write informally. I’m working on it!)

Coinciding with #2, Social Media, the regular use of Social Media can weaken our writing skills if we’re constantly seeing only high speed blips of information, 140 characters, text speech, etc. and spending no quality time reading. According to Digital Trends, the average America spends 4.7 hours checking social media on their phones each day! However, according to Time, the average American spends only 19 minutes reading each day! I find it very sad that we spend hours scanning through social media, but hardly make time for quality reading. I’m guilty of this, too! I’m trying to cut back on the time I spend on social media and increase the time I spend reading good quality books.

4. Information Overload

Have you ever heard someone say “too much of a good thing is a bad thing”? We live in amazing time–an information age! And I am so thankful for that!…But…When we digest so much information every minute, we’re less likely to retain any of it. It seems like hardly anyone ever chews on something any more. No one takes the time to read slowly and repeatedly. Even if we feel inspired for a moment, we’re distracted by the next thing we have to do or see the next post as we scroll in our news feeds and the moment of inspiration is gone forever–it had no lasting effect.

I’m a strong believer in quality over quantity.

What’s the point of having so much knowledge in our hands if we’re not taking the time to try to retain any of it? It really just becomes more of temporary entertainment rather than lasting knowledge. I think the occasional numb entertainment has its place, but I fear our culture will become purely numb machines–mindless and spoon-fed–and will emerge from this information age as dumber beings if we don’t take action to retain anything for ourselves (and I mean retain in our brains, not just in hard drives and clouds).

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So how can we read more smartly?

1. Check your sources.

Check your sources and do your research before believing something to be true. If you cannot confirm it, just take it with a grain of salt. Don’t pass it on to others as fact!!! If you do want to talk about it or share it, make sure they know you’re not certain of its validity. The trustworthiness of the things you say and share is your own trustworthiness. If you’ve shared or told me false information too many times, I’m just going to stop believing anything you tell me.

2. Read good quality content.

There is too much good content in this world to waste any time on poorly written content! Find the good stuff. Ask for recommendations from your friends with good taste. There can be good quality writing in light reads. But I also challenge you to stretch yourself; every so often, read something academic or with bigger words than you’re used to.

‘Monkey see, monkey do.’ and ‘What goes in must come out.’ If you’re only reading poor writing, poor writing will come from you. If you’re reading good quality writing, I promise you’ll see an improvement in your own writing skills.

3. Take time to CHEW.

Whenever you find a good article, slow down your reading and spend time reflecting on it. Set aside time in your week to read nonfiction. Take notes and underline or write down favorite quotes you want to remember. Read my article, Live What You Learn, for tips on how to not just be a hearer, but a doer.

You can even benefit from good quality fiction when you read a little more slowly. Writers can benefit from the examples of good character development and storylines, etc. But it’s not only writers who can benefit from reading fiction…anyone can! You can strengthen your vocabulary by using context clues and grow accustomed to beautiful sentence structures that will unknowingly absorb into your subconscious. Good fiction will also contain deeper themes and lessons that can be gleaned from between the lines. I don’t know about you, but I have experienced moments when something from fiction helped me make sense of something in my own real life. Just because its fiction doesn’t mean there aren’t real, relevant truths that can be applied to your everyday life.

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What’s ONE step you can take this week to become a smarter reader?