Health benefits of reading a book

Time - Over the past couple of decades, the share of Americans reading for pleasure has been steadily dropping, with one large study finding that only 16% of people read for pleasure. 

But a new review published in Psychological Medicine suggests that reading for pleasure—sitting down and focusing on a book you actually look forward to cracking open—can have significant impacts on your brain and wellbeing. 

Reading has an effect from a very young age, says Barbara Sahakian, an emeritus professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and an author of the new paper. In one study of about 10,000 children in the U.S., she and her colleagues found that kids who started to read for pleasure early in life were better adjusted later, regardless of their socioeconomic background. “They had better cognition, they had reduced symptoms of mental-health problems, they had better attention,” she says. They also spent less time on screens and slept longer.