An addiction to be proud of

Since that fateful day when I went crazy and tossed the TV out on the front lawn and denied my daughters their constitutionally guaranteed right to mindless distractions and foolishness like Jerry Springer and MTV, our lives took a turn for the better — well, at least mine did. I was finally a free man.

I grew up in a family that had five TVs, and they were always on, which means to say our home resembled the electronics department at Best Buy. I didn’t want my kids to share that pain — although they begged to — so I canceled our cable service, which gave me extra money for sinful pleasures like chocolate-covered doughnuts, leather-bound books and lottery tickets.

And once I got rid of the TV, our family started to engage in subversive activities like reading and dinnertime discussions that began with the innocent question, “So how did your day go?” and ended in mayhem. Actually, our family arguments were a primitive form of communication that evolved to higher forms of communication, such as yelling and swearing.

With no “Sex and the City” to watch, most of us turned into compulsive readers — those who aren’t compulsive readers are compulsive cleaners. Several of us even have piles of books on our nightstands and stashed in the trunks of our cars. (They have no name for this peculiar mental illness yet.)

My daughters enjoy reading everything from Star magazine, which is my personal favorite, to Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen and the Shopaholic novels.

Reading, however, has become an endangered pastime in America, where the average person spends five hours a day staring glassy-eyed at the TV. Preschoolers start getting addicted early and watch two hours at daycare plus three hours at home, which inevitably leads to language deficiencies, attention disorders, obesity and aggression.

But the problem goes beyond the tube. Most young Americans are hooked on electronic devices and spend 7.5 hours a day on smart phones, computers, TV and iPods, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The average teenager reads books for seven minutes a day, and a third of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives. A report by the National Endowment for the Arts concluded that 50 percent of young Americans never read books for pleasure.

The consequences are painful, particularly in the workplace. Only a third of high school seniors read at a proficient level, and 20 percent of American workers don’t read well enough to do their jobs.

But reading for pleasure has incalculable benefits even beyond the ability to do your job well. Research shows it correlates closely with social life, voting, political activism, participation in the arts, volunteerism, charity work, and even exercise — regardless of a person’s socio-economic status. For example, the poorest Americans who read do twice as much volunteering and charity work as the richest people who do not read.

Reading elevates us as human beings, much more than listening to Lady Gaga or playing Guitar Hero, so don’t be afraid to open a book.

Joe Pisani can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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