We are a culture of shallow readers.

What does that mean? Nowadays, most people only read short sentences or paragraphs from social media or news stories. While this can keep people abreast of surface level information, it fails to provide a deeper understanding of the world. How bad is the problem? Worse than you think!

In a recent article on the Conversation website, JT Torres and Jeff Saerys-Foy argue that deep reading is important for our wellbeing. They start the article titled Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill, with a clear picture of the challenge.

The average American checks their phone over 140 times a day, clocking an average of 4.5 hours of daily use, with 57% of people admitting they’re “addicted” to their phone. Tech companies, influencers and other content creators compete for all that attention, which has incentivized the rise of misinformation.

Considering this challenging information landscape, strong critical reading skills are as relevant and necessary as they’ve ever been.

The authors go on to explain why they believe that deep reading is a vital skill to master.

As a cognitive scientist and a literacy expert, we research the ways people process information through reading. Based on our work, we believe that deep reading can be an effective way to counter misinformation as well as reduce stress and loneliness. It can be tough to go deeper than a speedy skim, but there are strategies you can use to strengthen important reading skills.

So how does one become a deep reader? The authors suggest a few strategies. One simple approach is to slow down.

Simply being aware of how digital reading practices shape your brain can encourage new attitudes and habits toward how you consume information. Just pausing can reduce susceptibility to misinformation. Taking a few extra seconds to consciously judge information can counteract illusory truth, indicating that intentionally slowing down even just a bit can be beneficial.

Reading deeply means being able to intentionally choose when to read at different speeds, slowing down as needed to wrestle with difficult passages, savor striking prose, critically evaluate information, and reflect on the meaning of a text. It involves entering into a dialogue with the text rather than gleaning information.

To learn more ways to build deep reading skills, please read the rest of their article.