College: Ruining Pleasure Reading and Replacing it with Netflix

I have a theory. My theory is that college is inadvertently ruining pleasure reading and in it's place is perpetuating Netflix as a soothing activity. Allow me to explain.  

Anyone who attends college knows that reading long, agonizing textbook chapters is pretty much every professor's torture-method of choice. Reading that is required for classes is shrouded in a sense of punishment and reward. Don't read? Don't pass. Read? Pass. It the classic carrot/stick analogy. Because of this, the culture of reading as a whole gets re-framed in your mind. Gone are the days when reading was allowed to be it's own reward. Now reading is just a means to an end-- that end being a good grade on chapter quizzes and midterms. 

So much reading is assigned that by the time you're done reading for class, reading for pleasure is the last thing you want to do. Not only are your eyes tired of scanning lines of text, but your brain is screaming for a change of scenery. Of course, the mind still craves a story. Plus, you just want to relax with something soothing and easy and entertaining. 

Enter Netflix. The ultimate self-soother for college kids. "Reading for the eyes", as I refer to it. It satisfies the overworked college kid's desire for a passive activity that doesn't challenge the mind, while also satiating our intrinsic longing to be told a good tale. And believe me, it does a good job. Scandal, Atypical, 3%, the Hasan Minhaj comedy special? There's so much good stuff on there, and every college student is determined to watch it all. 

The trouble with Netflix is that it becomes the easy alternative to pleasure reading. Where now our associations have been skewed to view reading as a chore, a challenge, and a punishment/reward system rather than a leisure activity, we replace our once favorite treasured activity (reading for fun) with its lazy, colorful, much-more-mindless brother. And I will never never bash on TV and say that it rots your brain or makes you dumber. Because I think that's a bald faced lie. I've learned more from television than from pretty much any other medium, and I think that screenwriters and directors are absolute geniuses. BUT, they do make our job as the consumers really really easy. All we have to do is sit there. We don't really have to engage or interact. With reading, the consumer has to conjure up images in his or her mind, has to think a little harder about what the words say in order to make meaning out of them. But Netflix cuts out the middle man, tells and shows the story TO you, and requires nothing more than a blank stare and bad posture. 

At the end of the day, we students are the ones who have to make the decision to use our very limited free time to binge Netflix shows and movies, or read a good book. All I'm saying is college makes that second choice seem pretty undesirable in comparison to the first choice. 

What are your thoughts? Do YOU feel like reading a novel right after reading three chapters of an insanely dull textbook? Or do you feel like checking out mentally and watching three episodes of The Office? Let's just say that I hope some day in the future, my love for pleasure reading returns to me, and I never have to look at a textbook EVER AGAIN. 

VaughnDL