By Christina Karcher | Sophomore | Grosse Pointe South High School
[This work comes from the Art of Storytelling class, taught by Julia Satterthwaite.]
Ever since I knew how to string letters into words, and those words into sentences, I have loved to read. I would read for hours at a time, fiction about fairies and puppies, but despite their simplicity it taught me to respect and consider the experiences of other people around me. As I’ve grown older my love for reading has only expanded, and I realize how much I value being pulled into someone else’s experience.
It has made me more empathetic.
This isn’t something unique to me, studies have shown that there is a connection between reading fiction and higher levels of empathy. One example of these connections is a 2013 study published in ‘Science’ called ‘Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.’ Participants were assigned to read either literary fiction, genre fiction, non-fiction, or nothing. Then they were tested on their empathy levels. Participants who read literary fiction scored higher than the other groups. Similar studies have been done all coming back with the same conclusion: Reading character-driven stories increases empathy.
With this in mind I’ve thought about the steady decline over the decades of reading for pleasure. According to a Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2022 only 37.6 percent of adults had read a novel or short story during the year, compared to 45.2 percent in 2012. This slump is more prominent in younger people, with 39 percent of nine-year-olds in 2022 reading every day, compared to 53 percent in 2012.
I’ve noticed these changes as well, less people I know regularly read. As with any generation my peers can be caught looking for chapter summaries of their required reading instead of experiencing it for themselves. This trend is only progressively contributing to the decline of empathy as a society. From the rise of racism, misogyny, xenophobia and others, people have seemed to backtrack, and have less understanding for those they perceive as different from themselves.
In an age of fast cycles of ‘breaking news’ and social media, many people are emotionally disconnected from other peoples’ hardships, thinking ‘well it isn’t happening to me.’ But it is crucial to exercise our human nature to emphasize if we want the world to be a better place. Reading helps to strengthen empathy by forcing us to feel what the narrator feels, and step outside of our own minds to understand the lives of others.