Too many people these days spend most of their spare time in front of the
television
, while a small percentage prefer to read
books
as a hobby.
This
latter educated bracket of society claims they can empower their imagination and language capacity more than those who prefer series and films. In
this
essay, I will explain why I totally agree with them.
Reading
books
is more beneficial for imaginative and vocabulary abilities. From an imagination standpoint, the main reason behind the beneficial effects of reading resides in the absence of visual stimuli. In fact, the absence of pictures and videos forces the brain to elaborate an alphabetic code into a visual one in the visual and frontal cortex.
Accordingly
, studies on infants revealed that reducing direct stimulation of the visual cortex increased its connection with other areas,
that is
to say,
in other words
, it increased inventiveness.
In addition
to that, reading high calibre
books
permits readers to confront constantly with high-level vocabulary,
thus
improving their communication
skills
. There is no surprise that the students that read more are the same who achieve the highest results in their academic path, to name but an example.
On the other side, watching
television
is not beneficial for the aforementioned intellective
skills
.
First
and foremost, having every story sorted out without any effort, as is the case of
TV
series and films, does not stimulate inventiveness. In fact, studies on the brains of subjects, assessed through functional MRI, revealed that, while they were watching
television
the activity of their brains was strongly reduced. A
further
reason behind the lack of language
skills
growth resides in the poverty of terminology that the vast majority of
TV
programmes provides to the viewers.
As a result
, all of my friends who are spending a lot of their spare time in front of the
television
, are those with the poorest language range.
Moreover
, a recent Korean study revealed that each hour spent in front of a
TV
screen decreased the terminology acquired through reading by three to five words.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the advent of
TV
has drastically reduced the time spent on
books
by the vast majority of society. In
this
scenario, those who preserved the habit of reading claim that
this
helps develop more imagination and vocabulary
skills
. In
this
essay, I discussed
this
view along with the downsides entailed in excessive
TV
programmes consumption explaining,
therefore
, why I firmly agree with those supporting reading as a form of intellective development.