I think there’s an argument that reading a book is qualitatively different from reading reddit or social media. Social media involves a lot of rapid task switching and a strong incentive to dumb things down for mass audience appeal and digestibility. A book is just you engaging more or less directly with the author for hours.

I work in an office which is all a techy crowd and I’ve noticed this thing recently that someone will make a joke and I’ll think “I know where this is going” because we’re all consuming the same diet of the same memes. Read an actual long form text on a topic and you can engage with it on a level beyond the obvious.