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We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.

People tweet and text one another during plays and movies, forming judgments before seeing the arc of the entire work.

Recent books by respected authors like Malcolm Gladwell (“Outliers”), Susan Faludi (“The Terror Dream”) and Jane Jacobs (“Dark Age Ahead”) rely far more heavily on cherry-picked anecdotes — instead of broader-based evidence and assiduous analysis — than the books that first established their reputations. And online research enables scholars to power-search for nuggets of information that might support their theses, saving them the time of wading through stacks of material that might prove marginal but that might have also prompted them to reconsider or refine their original thinking.

For almost two years now, we’ve posted a fresh Student Opinion question every weekday.Each question was originally inspired by something in that week’s New York Times, and all of them are still open to comment by anyone between the ages of 13 and 25.Teachers tell us they use them as “bell-ringers,” as inspiration for lessons, as jumping-off points for student research and journalism, or just to help students practice writing persuasively and responding to others around the world. (We don’t allow last names, and we read each and every comment ourselves before we make it public, so it’s a pretty civil, and safe, place to post.)Below, 1

Stories,

stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.

nterprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive.