In her YouTube video, titled “Reading Makes You Hot,” which has more than 3.8 million views, Chamberlain describes how reading alleviates her anxiety and depression. She explains, “Reading is harmless. Going on social media is not harmless. It makes you sad, it makes you compare yourself to other people, it makes you depressed.” //

Millions of teens and young adults can relate to Chamberlain’s experience, and research has found a definite causal relationship between social media and depression. A study conducted by the University of Arkansas found that young adults who spent more than 300 minutes a day on social media platforms were “2.8 times as likely to become depressed within six months” than those who spent 120 minutes or less on social media.

According to Nicholas Carr’s bestselling book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” the exhaustion many users experience after engaging with social media stems from the fact that “our social standing is, in one way or another, always in play, always at risk. The resulting self-consciousness — even, at times, fear — magnifies the intensity of our involvement with the medium. That’s true for everyone, but it’s particularly true for the young.”

Thus, trying to relax through social media is a contradiction of terms. //

Reading, on the other hand, is a rather abnormal activity from an evolutionary standpoint. It requires “an unnatural process of thought, one that demand[s] sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object,” as Carr continues.

Strict mental discipline is needed to “resist the urge to let [one’s] focus skip from one sensory cue to another.” But by detaching from the distractions of the outside world, the reader develops the ability to think and process deeply, to digest and internalize the information being read in a way that no amount of internet research can replace.

Although reading thus poses a relaxing alternative to TikTok or Instagram, the transition process is not without its challenges. When she first began reading for leisure, Chamberlain realized that she “actually had forgotten how to read. I would read a whole page, I’d flip to the next page, and then I’d realize, ‘Oh wait, I absorbed no knowledge or information from that page.’ Then I’d go back and read the page again.”

She is not alone in her struggle. Reading comprehension has been declining in America for years, and lockdowns only exacerbated the situation. But Carr reassures us that rewiring your brain is possible. With enough training, those skills of deep concentration and focus can be relearned, or developed for the first time.

Just make sure to hide your smartphone while you practice.