I agree that you do not need to read books, but books are a good proxy for demanding content. If I count articles, the short texts from some gossip portal are v

I agree that you do not need to read books, but books are a good proxy for demanding content. If I count articles, the short texts from some gossip portal are valued as much as Harvard Business Review, science journal or whatever else, but their value is wildly different. Same goes for books by the way, but effort to finish a book is much higher. I also do not believe reading time stats, as people are not that good on self reporting, especially without hard criteria. The problem is that if you do not read demanding content, your ability to comprehend gets smaller. We made a society that you can live in without much intellectual struggle, but the question is whether we can keep having that society if we permanently cease to pursue intellectual interests.