Netflix has become a necessity for college students. At only eight dollars per month, and with thousands of hours of content, it has become many people’s primary source of entertainment. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but reading for entertainment can be a more productive way to spend our free time.

There are a lot of people who read for entertainment, but those that do not might find that it could help them in the long run. With the overwhelming amount of texts students have to read for classes, it can feel like there’s not a whole lot of time for frivolous reading. The fact is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. If we have time for Netflix, we have time to read.

Reading may seem like extra work, and that logic makes sense. Reading is a drag when we do it for biology class or when finding sources for a research paper; so it must be the reading that’s boring, right? The truth is, no, the actual act of reading itself is not what’s making us slump over our desks. Often assigned texts and academic articles are written in very dry language, and often about things we don’t care about. We actually read all day, and may not realize it or think of it as reading. If we read a tweet from Kanye or a text from bae; the thought going through our mind is not, "man, reading is so boring."

The same principle applies if you pick up a novel or story that really grips you. Once you’re invested in a book, it will cease to feel like work. Reading can be a great way to relieve stress, cure boredom, and can help you finish that forty-page academic article for your linguistics class.

The idea that reading novels and short stories actually makes you smarter is debatable, but reading is a skill that can always be improved. Reading more often means we can not only begin to read faster, but remember more of what we read. This may not seem important when we’re memorizing the great houses when we read A Game of Thrones, but proves vital when we have to read that very long, very dry article about ionic and covalent bonds.