The Debate: Is reading ‘better’ than watching TV?
It’s an age old debate that still gets people’s goats going – not least due to the snobbish presumptions behind those who back books. So let’s determine the answer once and for all: is reading morally better for you than watching TV?
Yes: There are creative benefits to reading
In an increasingly online world there is nothing more relaxing than sitting down, grabbing a book, and reading for a few hours. Not only is it a better feeling than sitting in front of a television and gazing into the pixels for hours on end, but it does actually have some objective advantages over watching TV.
The general scientific consensus is that the positive effects of reading are overwhelming when it comes to the development of children.
Looking at the creative benefits of books, they demand that readers construct their own mental images, scenarios and interpretations of the text. TV provides pre-visualised content, limiting the viewers’ need to imagine and create mental images – stripping the viewer of the active imagination process that reading has.
Books also offer in-depth exploration of characters and plots, encouraging critical thinking from the readers, whereas TV often focuses on visual appeal and entertainment. A perfect example of this would be Game of Thrones, and we all know the absolute assassination that was committed against the TV adaptation’s plotline there.
I know that it is somewhat hypocritical for me, a semi-regular television pundit, to be knocking TV, but you simply cannot deny that books offer a more active and engaging experience than television. Reading not only fosters a deeper understanding of the world, but also encourages a lifelong habit of learning and curiosity; so it is therefore inherently better than watching TV.
No: It’s the quality of message that matters not the format
To think watching TV is better or worse than reading is to misunderstand the value of ideas.
You could arbitrarily compare Mrs Brown’s Boys to Nobokov’s Pale Fire and decide that Literature Is Better, Actually. But you could just as easily compare Twin Peaks The Return or The Curse to the Alex Cross novel my dad bought me for Christmas, a book so terrible it almost becomes good before becoming terrible again in a whole new way.
You could talk all day about the effect reading has on your neurons or your brain chemistry but that’s quite literally academic (and anyway, a 2016 study found “no significant difference in comprehension between reading and listening”). What really matters is what you’re consuming – and we’re living through an age where some of the best creative minds are working in television.
People once hated the printing press, in the late 1700s they hated novels, then they hated TV and then they hated video games and soon they will hate something else and the people making art in those mediums will just get on with it. Haters gonna hate.
There’s a line in the song Sex is Boring by the underappreciated band Ballboy that sums it up: “And you’ve read more books than I, I could ever read… So why is it, why is it that you don’t know any more than me?”
It’s because reading isn’t inherently better than any other way of absorbing information – it’s the quality of the message that matters, not the slip of paper or cluster of LEDs you’re looking at.
The Verdict: As a newspaper, you can guess where we cast our vote…
It was courageous of our lifestyle editor to argue for TV over books in a debate column that is judged by a proudly in-print newspaper.
But Dinneen makes a compelling argument: it’s true that the printing press was once despised by the snobs of yore; people even destroyed them out of terror. We should all fear being anti progress and it’s undeniable that TV shows like Mad Men are richer in texture than the latest Mills & Boone. Moreover, to suggest that reading alone fosters learning and curiosity seems ignorant to the power of some of the best, eye-opening documentaries .
Yet equally, is there not also something in Twelves’s argument for the benefits of books – that the demanding experience of reading, which requires one’s absolute attention, improves concentration and active imagination?
Reading a book demands that one conjures up an image of character or place, whereas TV does not. Reading demands engagement in a way TV does not. Most importantly, reading is how this paper makes its money. So verdict? Reading is good! May we suggest a copy of a certain Morning Wire?