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Reading for pleasure facilitates the development of prosocial skills.

Reading can alleviate loneliness and social isolation.

Adults who read more tend to live longer, healthier lives.

It is all over the news and social media—paradoxically, we are lonelier and more disconnected from others than ever before, even as we spend more and more time online. Adolescents and young adults, in particular, are facing a mental health crisis, experiencing anxiety and social isolation at unprecedented rates.

Alongside these headlines are seemingly unrelated stories: Americans are reading for pleasure at lower rates than ever before. Lisa Bonos in The Washington Post reports on multiple research studies in the U.S. and in London over the last few decades that indicate that only 16 percent of the adult population reads for pleasure every day, and 46 percent have read no books at all in the last year.

What does this have to do with loneliness? Intriguingly, not reading fiction and feeling socially isolated may, in fact, be related. It is stories that connect us, to both characters in books and people in real life. When we listen to stories, we understand and empathize with others, key components of feeling connected.

Raymond Mar and his colleagues have been studying the effects of reading fiction for years, and they have........

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