I think reading is overrated.

The concept of reading as a habit have been considered as something to be praised, specially for kids and young people, for years. There's some people (teachers, parents, etc.) who even get to the point of saying things like: "It's not important what they're reading as long as they are reading something"... or, "let's find a book in a topic of their interest so they get to read something"... or forbidding the audio book format or any form of multimedia because that's the easy way... I've even heard people say something along the lines of "One of the things I like about him/her is that he/she likes to read". Like if that were an indicative of something.

I completely disagree with that kind of thinking... For years and years reading was one of the few forms of entertainment and source of knowledge for the average person. And even today there are lots and lots of content that you can only access in books or on a written format. But THAT'S IT. It's the content what is important, nothing more!

If you prefer reading as a form of entertainment or a source of knowledge, that's good, but it's not better that if you prefer using your free time watching movies or watching documentaries or educational videos if you want to learn about a certain topic.

I've seen kids being mortified at very young ages by their parents and teachers because of this topic, and as in any other matter, not all the people are the same, there are kids who simply can't read more than 10 pages of whatever content, as also there are other that just can't sit for 2 hours and watch a movie... They fail in the educational system because there seems to be a consensus that reading is the only way of learning and if you don't do it it's because you're lazy, and any form of multimedia is just seen as an easy path for the ones that doesn't want to put any effort.

And yes the Internet, TV and the entertainment business^1 in general is full of crap and not all is good, but in the same way there are tons of books that are simply shit. At the end is the content what it's important, not the format!!

Also the fact that someone enjoy the habit of reading, or that simply have the capacity of doing it^2 have nothing to do with how competent or ignorant someone is, and I say this because it's something that is sometimes said by... well... ignorant people.

Society is still dependent on the reading and writing skills for functioning, and that would be like that for who-knows-how-much more time, and that's also NOT a bad thing at all. By this I'm trying to say that these are skills that need to be thought and are extremely important for living in a modern society.

^[1] While writing these, I just realize that I'm comparing the Entertainment Business with books, and well book are actually a big part of the Entertainment Business as well. And putting this distance between the two things I think is something commonly done, and it's kind of what I'm trying to say with this whole thing.

^[2] As I said, I truly believe that there are people that just can't do it, and I'm not talking necessarily about people with some special kind of condition, or just kids. I'm talking also about adults or young people who get really frustrated when confronted with the task of reading through a large text.