How reading benefits young brains

Reading is a beloved pastime that’s having a moment. A number of variables have helped to renew people’s interest in reading. BookTok, a popular subcommunity on the social media platform TikTok in which users create videos to recommend and discuss books, is one such variable.

The BookTok trend has helped to spark and revive many people’s interest in reading, and that’s paid dividends for the bookseller Barnes & Noble, which plans to open 60 new stores in 2026 after opening 30 new stores in 2023, 61 in 2024 and 67 in 2025. Reading more also pays considerable dividends for readers, particularly school-aged book lovers. Research has found that reading has a notable impact on brain development in children:

• Reading can foster critical thinking skills. Reading fosters critical thinking skills by engaging readers in a story and encouraging them to ask questions about its characters and plot. The tutoring experts at Readability, who specialize in helping a diverse group of readers in making the shift from learning to read to reading to learn, note that reading helps students assess situations logically and form reasoned opinions.

• Reading can help build language skills. Reading helps children build their vocabularies by enabling them to read new words. Reading aloud to children can be especially beneficial for young children, but reading to themselves also encourages kids to learn new words. As children read and learn new words, their language skills expand.

• Reading fosters a sense of wonder about the world. The wide range of literary genres, from sci-fi to fantasy to history, can instill in children a sense of curiosity and wonder about the world they live in. That can spark interest in other subjects at school, including science, mathematics and art.

• Reading can benefit youngsters’ attention spans. Modern children are inundated with stimuli that does not necessarily foster longer attention spans. Social media videos and even some children’s television programming may have an adverse effect on kids’ ability to build a strong attention span. Reading helps kids to strengthen their focus by requiring them to concentrate on a narrative and process information as the story unfolds. That requires kids to maintain their attention for far longer than the average social media video.

Reading has a profound impact on the development of young children’s brains. That makes it both an enjoyable and effective pastime.