Readings effect on your cognitive ability/function and emotional IQ

Reading has been a favorite past-time of mine since i can remember. Whether its a well written novel, an interesting article/scientific study or an opinion piece in the local newspaper i find reading a great way to pass time, to learn and to expand my vocabulary. In fact to be perfectly honest i attribute a lot more of my knowledge to reading than to the standard education i received during schooling, i can't prove it but i believe reading authors like John Grisham, Matthew Reilly and Sue Townsend contributed more intellectually than any single teacher ever did.

Reading is like going to the gym for your brain, it requires patience and sometimes determination but the results are evident.
In a time where 1/4 of American children grow up unable to read and smartphone addiction is a key component we need to start engaging people with books again. 60% of the U.S prison population is functionally illiterate and 85% of the juveniles who face court are functionally illiterate which shows an evident relationship between illiteracy and crime.

Carnegie Mellon University scientists Timothy Keller and Marcel Just published a study in 2009 showing how reading can re-wire and produce new white matter in the brain which helps with system-wide communication. "Showing that it's possible to rewire a brain's white matter has important implications for treating reading disabilities and other developmental disorders, including autism," said Just, the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology and director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI).

Reading itself isn't what causes this increase in cognitive functioning, rather reading challenging material that includes unfamiliar words and is laced with information is what truly helps. That means all the time we spend scrolling through Facebook and Twitter isn't going to help us. We need to pick up a new book or discover scientific articles if we want to see improvement.

Often times when watching a movie or T.V show i will hear or see something interesting and proceed to Google and Wikipedia it which often leads me off on a tangent of reading the most random things. I'll jump from article to article ending up with upwards of 30 tabs open waiting for me to get to that i probably never will because each tab i go to exponentially grows the number of tabs i have open. It's a vicious cycle but its one of the reasons i know such random things like Carpophorus’s Rape Giraffes from ancient Rome. ( it is brutal so be prepared if you look it up yourself)
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Novel reading is a great way to increase your emotional IQ. As you read about a young mans coming of age story or a neglected and abused housewife's story of her struggles you relate to the characters on an emotional level. you don't just see the words, you feel the emotions they feel. This can have a profound impact on how we view people and scenarios in the real world. It helps us to understand how other people feel, why they feel that way and to display more understanding in the way we react.
There is evidence to suggest that reading can increase all 3 major categories of intelligence.

Poetry has been found to be one of the best ways to increase emotional intelligence, one study published in 2011 showed up to 40% of participants had visible goosebumps from listening to poetry. "Their neurological responses, however, seemed to be unique to poetry: Scans taken during the study showed that listening to the poems activated parts of participants’ brains that, as other studies have shown, are not activated when listening to music or watching films."
this study obviously showed the benefits of listening to poetry but reading it is equally as rewarding for your brain.

Reading is an incredible way to distribute and pass down information from generation to generation. It improves our ability to communicate and can even make us more happy and content in life. Reading improves your vocabulary and helps in social situations where you begin to find more words at your disposal. Reading doesn't just give the illusion of being intelligent but actually enhances intelligence and in this day and age we need to start promoting good old reading again. Smart-phones video games and TV are killing the written word but they can easily live side-by-side. We just need to bring reading back to mainstream and find books that interest ourselves.
Dinosaurs never read books and look what happened to them...

Sources
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-literacy-america
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/23/can-reading-make-you-smarter
http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/reading-rewires-your-brain-for-more-intelligence-and-empathy