John Green is best known for his tear-jerking young adult novels. But beyond the emotionally charged lives of two teens bound by more than their illnesses in his bestseller, The Fault in Our Stars, Green has become widely recognized for giving his curious audience a crash course in everything from history and philosophy to science and current events. He’s known to his over two million social media followers as an expert in centuries-old historical events, global health, and our modern technological landscape.
Green is able to connect with a broad audience because of his uncanny ability to understand the dark and complex realities of people—particularly young ones. And he has a message for them.
“I worry a lot that young people are affected by the terrible disease of loneliness at a scale that we haven’t seen before,” he tells Fortune.
“I think they should be reading more books,” Green says. “But I’m biased. That’s like asking a musician if people should listen to music.”
Nonetheless, he sees reading as the most significant character development tool for young people.
“My case for books is that they shrink the empathy gap,” Green says, “because when I read Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield isn’t my friend or my spouse or my anything, [but] he is as close as I can come to being someone else.”
A key marker of happiness, per the report, is believing in the good of others. Lacking valuable social connections can make believing in the goodwill of others more challenging. Finding a way to bridge the empathy gap, as Green says, could encourage us to reach out to people, beyond the pages of a book.
“Through the process of imagining with clarity and sophistication what it’s like to be someone else, we both learn what it’s like to be ourselves, but we also learn what it’s like to be one of the 8 billion other people on this planet,” Green says.
