I’ve been told that reading is a lost art.

I beg to differ though. I think people are reading more now than ever. The thing is, it’s not books that they’re reading. It’s texts, posts, tweets, or really, anything on a screen.

So, what I think people mean to say is that people aren’t reading books anymore. And to me, as quite possibly one of the biggest bookworms on the face of the planet, that’s kind of a sad fact.

Within this past decade, technology has blown through the roof. New ideas and updates keep coming faster than I can keep up with them. It’s incredible. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and all the things it allows us to do.

But technology has taken over our lives. Now, we feel empty without our phones on us. If our WiFi is down, we panic. We can’t stand to be disconnected.

It’s not that technology is bad. It’s the fact that kids’ attention spans are so much shorter. It’s the fact that we are glued to tiny devices that can find and do almost anything for us.

I’m not writing this to bash on technology. I’m writing to speak up for something that I love.

My love of reading was something instilled in me as a very young child. I started to read children’s books at the age of 4 and by kindergarten, I was reading the Nancy Drew books. Needless to say, I kind of enjoyed reading and took off with it.

And I still do! Any free time I have, (which is not much, thank you, junior year) you’d be very likely to find me with a book in my hand, sprawled in some weird position across a chair or my bed. The feeling of the pages in my hand, turning each page with anticipation and wonder of what will happen next exhilarates me.

You’re probably thinking I’m a little odd by this point. I mean, I just talked about how READING makes me feel alive and phones are bad. Weird, right?

But see, that’s the problem with all this technology. It’s made us less sensitive to certain things. We see horrific images on screens and it doesn’t faze us. Therefore, reading doesn’t provide the same simulation for the brain as it once used to.

Congratulations to those of you who read enough to make it through the end of this column! Now go out and read a real authentic book. You never know, you may fall in love at the hands of a paperback.