What? That's like taking a kid to a toy store, looking around, then leaving because the kid has too many toys. Why bother going in the first place? I'll never understand parents these days...

I'm sorry, but.....excuse me? In order of your points, sir or madam: 1) Excessive reading damages your eyesight .....Only if the light you're reading by is bad. 2) Reading does NOT increase your intelligence, it makes you better at reading and nothing else. Compare this to the fact that recent studies have shown that playing computer games will improve your coordination and reaction skills. What's a better improvement? This depends to a certain degree on the book, but certainly there are boatloads of volumes out there that can teach you valuable skills of various types, from cooking to astro-physics, and those that fall under the heading of 'novel' can produce interesting questions of various kinds, such as the nature of good and evil or how a person fits into their society. Older books give us windows into the past, modern ones give insight into our current mindset. As for the coordination provided by video games, honestly, what are the odds that a person will ever be really able to put that to use as a working force in their lives? Sure it's nice to be able to catch a thrown object or something that fell off a table, but barring the precious few people who make it in the word of sports you cannot make a living that way. The one possible exception is that of surgeons who perform laproscopic procedures, which require them to be able to coordinate their hands and the laproscope. Guess how I knew that? I read medical journals amongst other things. Oh the irony is rich tonight. 3) Choosing to read instead of socializing will simply make you dumber and more depressed over time. Socializing works your brain like nothing else, and is the most important factor in long term happiness. GET OUT MORE. Well then why is it that the acknowledged queen of socializing, the cheerleader, is dumb as a sack of hammers and is likely to achieve precious little while the geek hiding in the corner with the book might win the next Nobel Peace Prize? The fact of the matter is that socializing is good, but reading trumps it by a long shot.