When I was younger, many of my peers shared my love of reading. At my elementary school, our teachers mandated that we all be reading a book at all times, but I like to think that most people would have read anyways. We all lived off of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, with the occasional Septimus Heap book thrown in, and books dominated much of our conversations. Reading was not something exceptional or out of the ordinary, it was something that we all did, something that most of us liked and quite a few of us loved.

In middle school, I gradually began to witness my peers’ interests shift away from reading and towards other pursuits. Almost everyone got phones, and most of us got smart phones, these became the new source of entertainment. Reading was fast becoming something outside of the norm, an interest relegated to nerds and teachers’ pets. It was no longer cool to express a love of reading, much less a love of books. Teachers still assigned reading, but most students never actually read the books we were assigned. I, as someone who devoured books by the dozen, felt both alienated and perplexed by my peers’ behavior. Middle school was a time where my reading horizons practically exploded; I read classics, fantasy, science-fiction, historical fiction, mysteries, horror, and contemporary fiction; everything I could get my hands on. I was discovering new favorite authors such as Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jonathan Stroud and new favorite books such as The Book Thief, Watership Down, and Sorcery and Cecelia. Aside from providing me with hours of entertainment, all of this reading affected me as a person, and I really do think that it has made all the difference for me.

Books have taught me so much- new facts and tidbits, truths about human nature, appreciation for writing craft. However, I think the most important thing that reading gives me is the ability to appreciate and sympathize with people I will never meet and places I will never visit. When I pick up a book, I am instantly transported, able to experience events that I will never see take place and live ten lives in just the span of a few pages. I am firmly convicted that reading has made me a more tolerant, sympathetic person. This is the reason why I believe that reading is so important, and why I am disheartened by the lack of interest that most people my age show in it.

I am not knocking other mediums, such as movies or TV shows, that people always seem to be comparing to books. TV can be just as rewarding as books can, and, in some cases, can provide things that books cannot. However, I do think that the ideal ratio of time spent watching TV to time spent reading should be at the very least equal (for me it will always be heavily tipped in the favor of books; they will forever be my true love), because watching TV is a passive activity, while reading is an active activity. By this I mean that reading engages your brain, encouraging you to form connections and visualize scenery. TV, on the other hand, does all of the work for you. And I will forever insist that no media gives us the same capacity for empathy that books do, because only books allow us to so closely and deeply experience the emotions felt by someone else without actually being the person. And as phones go, while I admit that smart phones have many awesome features that can be great methods of communications or forms of entertainment, I feel that they can definitely foster a technology addiction and can result in hours of wasted time. I freely admit that I sometimes feel like I've spent too much time on my phone, but I do everything I can to keep myself from becoming addicted to it, because I want to make sure that I am consuming media that will truly positively impact me.

I also want to mention the point of vocabulary. Not only has reading given me my love of the written word and writing in general, it has given me my love for words themselves, and has encouraged me to cultivate a large, varied vocabulary. Whenever someone asks me where I heard of a word that I have used, nine out of ten times the answer is that I read it in a book.

So when I say that I wish more of my peers read, it stems not a desire to be able to discuss books with them (okay, fine that’s definitely part of it, but not all of it), but from my personal experiences with the positive impact reading has had on my life, and in the hopes that reading might have the same impact on them.

This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Nerdy and Wordy.