Idea Exposure

• If you can read well, you can expose yourself to a more diverse range of materials than someone who doesn't read very well. This means that you can be exposed to more ideas, which gives you a better understanding of the world around you. After all, there's only so much that the relatively simple writing style of a newspaper or magazine can offer. To get more in-depth and abstract, you need higher-level reading skills.
  
  

Understanding

• Many documents dramatically affect our day-to-day lives, such as credit card agreement contracts and insurance policies. If your reading skills are not very high, you can read these documents but you won't necessarily comprehend them as well as someone with a more-advanced reading level. This means that someone with more-advanced reading skills has a better understanding of how these things affect him than someone without. This makes it easier to make decisions.
  
  

Cultural Understanding

• People express themselves through reading. High-level reading skills give you the ability to read things about and by people from other cultures. This makes it easier to understand them, which can help you have more empathy for them.
  
  

Vocabulary

• Reading improves your vocabulary because it exposes you to a variety of new words. More importantly, though, it exposes you to new words in context. Reading one definition of a word does not really give the same effect as repeatedly seeing it used in a sentence. A large vocabulary can help with standardized testing, which is key for older teens. Generally, it gives you the ability to express yourself more precisely, which dramatically improves your communication skills.